The Librarians 1x10 And the Loom of Fate: All the Pieces in their Place

First, I have to apologize for the delay in getting this writeen. Life has been busy for a while, so I haven't had a s much time to write.

One of my favorite things about TV shows is continuity. I’m a sucker for continuity, callbacks, brick jokes, and any other little easter eggs that creators put in their shows for people who watch the whole season (or all the seasons for shows that have more than one). I’m also a big fan of shows that lay breadcrumbs and then put them altogether in in the season finales in satisfying ways. Which is while you’ll understand why one of my favorite things about this season finale of the Librarians is how it pulls in everything that has happened over the course of the season and makes it all relevant in some manner or another.

I’ve spent many of my reviews talking about how each person on the LIT team is vitally important, not just to each other but to the team’s ability to solve each case in the best way possible. As far back as the pilot, I talked about how each individual was needed to stop the Brotherhood and prevent magic from going wild. So it really shouldn’t be surprising that the finale explores the idea of what the world would have been like if the LITs hadn’t come together. Everything has been leading us to this. And everyone is necessary. This episode shows us exactly how. So let’s dive in.

Eve and Flynn (and Alt!Flynn)

I may have mentioned this before, but in case I haven’t, I have a small confession: I’ve never actually seen any of the Librarian movies. I’m sure they're great, I’ve just never watched them. Because of this, I’ve never seen what Flynn was like when he had his Guardian around. One thing I loved about this episode is that we finally get to see what it would have been like if Eve and Flynn had been working together this whole time and it’s great. They make a great team and I love that. And while they both function well separately, it’s clear that they are in top form when working together.

Beyond that though, we also get to see what Flynn would have been like if he hadn’t become the Librarian. If he hadn’t become the Librarian, if he hadn’t met all of the LITs, then the world would have turned out quite differently. Having never seen the movies, I don’t know what Flynn was like before he became the Librarian, but based on this episode, I can make a few guesses. Mostly, I think he was scared, which sheds a whole new light on the team.

Throughout my reviews, I’ve mentioned that every single one of the LITs and Eve had been hiding from something or been disconnected from something before they came to the LIbrary. It turns out the Flynn was no different. Where Eve hid in her job, Cassie hid in obscurity, Ezekiel hid in arrogance and crime, and Jake hid by not being true to himself, Flynn hid by burying himself in research and learning. If he’d allowed himself to stay there, he would never have left his university, staying and getting more and more degrees but never really experiencing the world. In fact, alt!Flynn only left because his colleagues dared him to and as soon as things got a little rough he regretted the decision and tried to run away again. It’s only by being dragged through all the other alternate timelines and experiencing the adventures he could have had that he realizes what he missed out on. It’s only thanks to Eve that he realizes what he needs to do.

Just like Eve has a special relationship with Flynn, it turns out that she would have had a special relationship with each of the LITs had things been different. No matter what reality they would have wound up in, she would have had a special connection with the LITs. I’ll get into those special connection more below.

Our Eve, Prime!Eve, though is drawn to a particular LIbrarian, her Librarian. Even when he doesn’t remember who he (or she is) there’s a connection there. We saw it in the pilot and we see it again here. She and Flynn have a special connection that nothing can take away, even tears in the fabric of reality. And it’s this connection that drives Eve to sacrifice herself for Flynn. She loves him and so she is willing to give her life for him.

In the end though, it’s Eve’s love for Flynn that allows him to save her life. Back near the beginning of the episode, when Du Lac and Lmaia first show up, he says that a blood sacrifice is needed to make the portal work correctly. Then he proceeds to stab Lamia and use her blood. She protests, saying she loved him, and he tells her he knows as that was a requirement for the ritual to work. So at the end, it’s Eve’s love that allows Flynn to use her blood to access the Library again and get the Oil of Bathsheba to save her life. If she hadn’t loved him, they never would have been able to get back to the Library.

It’s also this blood, this love, that allows the Library to finally accept Eve as a part of itself. She starts off the episode complaining to Flynn that her desk keeps resetting itself to his preferences no matter how many times she tries to make it stop. Then, at the end of the episode, her blood is used to connect the annex back to the Library. WIth that sacrifice, with the power that came from that love, she was finally connected to the Library in a way she hadn’t been before. Because of that, the Library finally “accepted” her and her desk truly became hers.

Jake (and Alt!Jake)

I mentioned above that each of the alt!LITs has a unique relationship with their Eve, which we get a hint of during their various encounters with prime!Eve. The implication of this is that all Librarians have a special and unique relationship with their Guardians. THanks to all the reality hopping, we get to see shades of those different types of relationships.

Alt!Jake and Eve’s relationship is the first one we see. Alt!Jakes’ relationship with his Eve seems to be most similar to the one Prime!Eve has with Flynn. The thing that I find most interesting about their relationship is that at some point it developed into something romantic. Eve and I have the same opinion of this development (NOPE!), but clearly the potential is there. Eve and Jake get along very well, there is a connection there that is different from her connections to the other LITs. If things had been different, if Jake had been the only Librarian and Eve had been his Guardian, maybe it would have developed into something romantic. If that had happened though, things would have turned out much differently for our world.

Like their relationships with their Eves, each of the alt!LITs has a different tie back to a particular case that out LITs worked and solved. Alt!Jake’s case was actually the very first one. In his reality, because he didn’t have his team, he wasn’t able to stop Du Lac from allowing wild magic back into the world. Because of that, he is fighting a losing battle against the wild magic. The point that the whole team (and Flynn in particular) is needed is really hammered home when FLynn points out a clue about the trees they are standing amongst that helps alt!Jake save their lives and send them on to the next time line. Alt!Jake says he wouldn’t have noticed that detail, since he does art and history, not trees. Which is exactly why every single member of the team is vital to their success.

Ezekiel (and Atl!Ezekiel)

When Eve and Flynn transport to the next reality, they encounter a much more serious alt!Ezekiel and we learn a little bit about Ezekiel and Eve’s relationship and what it could have been like.

In this reality, alt!Eve’s relationship with Alt!Ezekiel is much more like that of a mother and son. Our Eve isn’t super comfortable with this, given that it makes her feel old, but I think it’s incredibly sweet. We don’t actually know much about Ezekiel’s past, who his parents are or how he wound up as a thief. When Cassie asked him about his high school experience, he never answered the question. But Ezekiel is pretty young. We don’t have an exact age for him, but given that he was called at the same time as Cassie, Jake, and Flynn, and alt!Ezekiel says he became the Librarian when he was a teen, I would guess Ezekiel is no older than mid 20s. He’s still a kid. So it’s not much of a stretch for me to think that he could see or come to see Eve as a sort of motherly figure.

Just like alt!Jake, alt!Ezekiel finds himself plagued with a problem caused by a case he couldn’t solve correctly without the rest of the LITs. His problem case was the house from Heart of Darkness. Without the rest of the team to solve the problem and confront Katie, alt!Ezekiel didn’t quite kill Katie correctly and now his whole world is possessed by ghosts. It’s only thanks to Flynn’s help that they manage to save the world and fully banish the evil ghosts. And once more, we see just how important the whole team is.

Cassandra (and Alt!Cassandra)

The last alternate reality Eve and Flynn find themselves in is alt!Cassie’s and it’s as different from the main reality as possible at this point. (Side note: isn’t it interesting how the realities got progressively more bizarre and further from true reality. Jake’s was pretty normal, while Ezekiel’s was full of ghosts. Cassie’s is more like the middle ages than any of the others.)

Alt!Cassie’s relationship with Eve is not really elaborated on, though we do get a few hints as to what it might be. She tells Eve directly that alt!Eve was not a mothering figure like she was with Alt!Ezekiel, but she doesn’t say much beyond that. It remains unclear if alt!Cassie and her Eve were lovers like with alt!Jake or something else. Whatever she was, alt!Eve was clearly more than just a Guardian to alt!Cassie.

Alt!Cassie’s world-ending problem is larger and more dire than either of the other two alt!LITs. Her issue comes from the Apple of Discord. Back in that episode, Flynn mentioned that if they didn’t stop the dragons, they would destroy something like 2/3s of the world. In alt!Cassie’s reality, that appears to be what happened, as dragons are awake and rampaging. The world has turned back to something much closer the age of Camelot than either of the other realities. It’s also the most openly magical of the realities. Alt!Cassie has fully embraced her penchant for magic and has become quite adept at it.

Once more though, we’re reminded why the team is needed when alt!Cassie wants to give up and simply move all her surviving people to another reality. Flynn reminds her that she’s a Librarian and she should be fighting, that she’s held out longer than any others. It’s thanks to him that she’s convinced to help Eve repair the tear and restore the world to the way it should be. Which brings us to the team as a whole.

The Team

I think one of my favorite things about this episode is how smoothly the team is working together. At the beginning of the series, they could barely stand each other. There was open animosity and distrust. Throughout the course of the season, we’ve seen them slowly gel as a team and learn to work with each others strengths while covering their weaknesses. So seeing them work so well together at the beginning of the episode was beautiful.

As we moved into the episode proper and Flynn revealed that he thought he’d found a way to bring the Library back, we quickly discover that everything that the team did throughout the season tied in to saving the Library. I mentioned before that I’m a sucker for continuity, so realizing that several of the cases they’d worked had led directly to obtaining the objects they needed to bring the Library back made me practically squeal with joy. Without each of them, they couldn’t succeed. And without all of them together again, they still can’t succeed. They have to splice the threads together. Alt!Cassie uses all three alt!LITs as the focus for her spell. They are the only thing that is common between all the realities, so of course they must be the focus. In the end, they become what is literally holding the thread of fate and time together. And they are more than willing to sacrifice themselves so that Eve can set reality right. In a beautiful callback to the pilot, they quote the speech Flynn gave them when they became LITs.

At the end of the episode, the LITs become full fledged Librarians, and we see just how much they’ve come to see each other as family. They each try to think about going back to life they was it was before the Library with varying amounts of success. Ezekiel claims the Library is still too “judgy” and Jake claims to want to see his family, so they are going to leave. Only Cassie says she’ll try a case, since she had nothing before the Library and she isn’t speaking to her family. The looks on the boys faces as she opens the book and gets her case is one of pure and utter longing. No matter what they say, they aren’t ready to go home. For a moment, it looks like she’ll go off by herself, but the boys can’t let her, so they run to catch up and our favorite three Librarians head off to have some fun in Peru together.

Jenkins

I don’t usually spend much time talking about Jenkins in my reviews. That isn’t because I don’t like him. It’s mostly because his arc was so subtle that it was hard to see the whole thing until we got to the end. And in the end, we learned that Jenkins may have been guiding everything. Every single case they went on had some effect on the final problem of getting the library back, on keeping the Brotherhood at bay and making sure our world didn’t get destroyed. But four inparticular tied especially into getting the Library back (City of LIghts, Fables, Rule of Three, and Santa). Now, of those four cases, three of them can be chocked up to coincidence, but, as Eve points, out, one did not come from the clippings book. What’s more, it may have been the most important case of all of them.

If Jenkins hadn’t sent them to rescue Santa, Eve never would have split across all of the world distributing the Gift of hope. If that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t have been able to retain her memories of everything that happened in the different realities. If she hadn’t been able to remember everything, she and Flynn never would have been able to save the world and the Library. I think we can safely surmise that Jenkins has been working at saving the Library this whole time. What’s more, he has a much wider view of what’s going on than anyone first thought. I cannot wait to see where that leads in season two.

Other Random Goodness
~”Next time, mummy memo.”
~”Jenkins you’re a genius!” “One is aware, sir.”
~Even when Flynn isn’t the Librarian, he babbles. It’s clearly a personality trait and not tied to being the Librarian.
~”NATO! Western Spy!” “Oh crap!” It’s really the delivery of the line that sells it.
~”If I met myself would I EXPLODE?!”
~”What? No. No, that’s mathematically . . . improbable.” “Actually that’s not true-.” “Uh, that’s not helping.”
~”Protip: always handcuff people to the chair, not just in the chair.”
~The LITs quoting Flynn’s speech from the pilot.
~The whole ending scene with the LITs was perfection.
~”You know, I’ve been meaning to check out Machu Picchu.” “I didn’t know you were into wrestling.” “That’s not what . . . You don’t know what Machu Picchu is? How do you call yourself a Librarian.” “I’m just as much one as you. I got a book!” “That’s a pity book.”
~”I don’t remember what happened while history and fate were . . . wahwahwah.” Jenkins is the best. I love him so much because of these little things. I don’t think anyone other than John Larroquette could deliver such silly lines with such gravitas and make them be hilarious yet plausible at the same time.

Well, that’s it for my reviews of the first season of the Librarians. I am so excited that we’re getting a second season. Once it starts, I may be forced to do reviews as the new episodes air (something I never, ever do).

In the mean time, I’m going to take a break from reviewing for a week or two. My life has been insanely busy since Easter due to getting ready to go to Guatemala again this year. Because of that, I have a lot less time to write. But I still want to do reviews, so I’m thinking in a couple weeks I’ll start up again with a new series. I may not be able to get a review up every week, but I’m going to do my best.

Next week, I’ll announce what series I’ll be reviewing. I can tell you I’m pretty super excited about it.

Until then.

The Librarians 1x07 and the Rule of Three: Past Lives

First, let me apologize for the lateness of getting this review done. My life got super busy the week before Easter and didn’t really slow down until this week. Thankfully, it’s looking to be slowing a bit so I had a chance to work on this. I’m hoping to be back to normal scheduling this week or next. Now on to the review.

Highschool. That word brings about a lot of different feelings for a lot of different people. For some, it’s the best time of their lives. For others, it’s the closest thing to torture they’ve ever endured and they couldn’t be happier when they never have to deal with it again. For still others, it was neither of these things, instead just a place that they went everyday to get a little learning and prepare for college. No matter what they thought of high school, everyone was sorted into some kind of category and that category seemed to say a lot about who they were.

At least, that’s what I’ve heard. My high school experience wasn’t the typical one. You see, I was homeschooled all through high school (actually from third grade until I graduated high school). Because of this, I really have no experience with the great beast that was high school, nor with the groups that everyone seemed to fall into. High school, for me, was always something of a mystery, since I experienced it so differently from all of my friends.

Despite this, I do know that who we were in high school says a lot about us, but it doesn’t completely define us and it’s possibly to change from who we were into a new person all together. Just telling you that I was homeschooled brings up assumptions in your mind. The same thing is true when you find out that someone was an athlete or a mathlete or class president when they were in high school. Just because we were one thing in high school though, doesn’t mean that we can’t change.

This week, our LITs head to a high school science fair and we get a little peak into some of their pasts, which informs what we know about their presents. So lets dive in.

Cassie

The mystery this week takes the LITs to a place that is like a second home to Cassie. The STEM fair is is her world, a world of science and math and intelligence. Cassie is so excited to be there and see all the projects and just simply be around all the science. She loves this, used to live for it, so it’s like stepping into a familiar memory for her, returning to a happy place. At least, that’s what it seems like at first. As the episode continues though, we learn that this isn’t the case after all.

As she tells Ezekiel later in the episode, the science fair was her home, so much so that she had a wall full of trophies. In high school, she was the quintessential smart kid. She had all the answers, won all the awards, was on track to get into the best college and become a brain surgeon or astrophysicist. That all changed when she started having hallucinations and had to drop out of school. Suddenly, her parents couldn’t handle how she’d changed, so school and fairs and trophies went away. Cassie’s life was never the same.

The sad thing for Cassie is that she didn’t just lose the fairs; she lost her parents too. Before her tumor, everything was about her grades and doing well. It’s why she can completely relate to Amy. She knows what it’s like to put everything else on hold, to try to live up to the pressure of overenthusiastic parents. She tells the team that if she’d been given a shortcut, a guarantee to win and get into a good school, she would have taken it. When everything is about winning and coming out on top, you’ll stop at nothing to do that.

Now though, Cassie realizes the importance of balance, of life outside of scholastic accomplishment. She didn’t learn that by losing all her trophies though. Remember where Flynn found her? She was a janitor in a hospital. She was so far from what she had been. Losing everything because of her tumor sent her into a spiral. It wasn’t until she came to the Library and met Flynn, Jake, Ezekiel, and Eve that she started to find that balance, started to see that she could use her hallucinations and her super intelligence together and still have friends and a new family. The library gave her that.

Ezekiel

In a short meta for Tumblr that I wrote on character arcs throughout the season, I mentioned that Ezekiel is the one character whose arc has been the subtlest. He seems to change the least of everyone at the Annex (except for maybe Jenkins). I think this is the episodes that shows just how much he has changed since the beginning of the season.

Back in the pilot, Ezekiel made sure everyone knew he was just helping because he wanted to find out who was trying to kill him. He could care less about saving the world. In Horns, he was very clear on the point that if things got sticky, he’d bail. He didn’t fight. Then in Fables, he told Eve that when things got boring, or too much like work, he’d bail. He doesn’t do attachments or hard work. He’s spent too much time skating through life, why stop now?

As the season progressed, we began to see a slightly different side of Ezekiel. He’s never not going to be the cocky thief who relies far too heavily on his (admittedly very good) luck. Now though, he’s also grown a bit attached to the people at the Library. He proves that by what he does at the end of Rule of Three.

He spent the episode finding out that Cassie had lost a lot because of her hallucinations. She’d lost her future, her way of life, and her family. He is clearly struck by this, because at the end of the episode he does something that is as close to selfless as Ezekiel gets: he steals the STEM trophy and gives it to Cassie. This is kind of a big deal and I’m going to tell you why.

Ezekiel is nothing if not selfish. He looks out for himself first. Everything he’s done to help throughout the season has had the added benefit of keeping himself safe and in one piece. In fact, at the beginning of the episode, he is seen to have availed himself of the backdoor just to steal something for himself, because he can. He looks out for number one first.

Yet, at the end of Rule of Three, he acquires the trophy not because it’s meaningful to him or will bring him anything. No, he gets it for the sole purpose of giving it to Cassie and trying to give her back a little piece of everything she’d lost. It was as close to a selfless act as we’ve ever seen from him. That, my friends, is kind of a big deal. I never want Ezekiel to be less of the cocky thief that he is, but it’s nice to see that he is able to think of people besides himself, that he’s come to care about his team, maybe even seeing them as friends.

Jake

Just like with Cassie, thanks to this weeks setting, we get to learn a little bit about what Jake was like in high school. One might think, given his love of art and history that Jake would have been one of the artistic or literary kids, but he wasn’t. Instead he concealed his love of art and focused on on more socially acceptable pastimes (probably football. Oklahoma and all). Where Cassie let her intelligence consume her life, Jake hid from his. They are like two sides of the same coin. Jake has always been a bit afraid of his intelligence. He’s a man with an IQ of 190 and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of art, culture, history, and language. But you’d never know that when you first meet him. And until he came to the library, that’s exactly how he liked it.

Jake tells Dashel that he wore a costume in high school. He did all the things that were expected of him. When Dashel quips that he’s sure Jake never got beat up for reciting poetry, Jake tells him he’s right, because Jake never recited poetry. Instead, he hid behind his physical attributes, wore his costume “like second skin”. He made sure everyone saw him the way he wanted them to see him. He’s starting to realize that he did that for too long. He even tells Dashel as much. Now, thanks to the Library and the LITs, hes finding that he can actually be himself, just like Cassie.

Eve

Have you ever met someone who is constantly being underestimated? I’m sure you have. We all have. In fact, you might even be that person. In the Library universe, Eve is that person. Everyone knows that she is a physical threat. She’s the most physically capable person on the show. What they seem to forget is that she’s a lot smarter than she seems. It can be easy to forget Eve’s intelligence because she’s constantly surrounded by genius level intellects. Being surrounded by geniuses has a tendency to make above average people look dumb. However, Eve is not dumb. This episode continues to prove that.

She manages to surprise Morgan la Fey, something that no one would think possible, given that Morgan is one of the most powerful magic wielders ever. Yet Eve devises a way to use Morgan’s own power against her. She even impresses Morgan, which I’m certain is extremely hard to do. I don’t think Morgan will ever underestimate Eve again.

Other Random Goodness:
~”It’s a brain jar. What else would one put in it?”
~I love how all of the team spends even their days off at the Annex.
~”Why are you blighting me today?”
~I love when Cassie gets to be excited and dorky. That’s my favorite side of Cassie.
~Ezekiel never tells us what he was in high school. I find his desire to hide that info suspicious. What dark secrets are lurking in his past? Could it be a terrible yearbook photo? *gasp* Seriously though, what group did he fit in during high school?
~”Someday, that cover story is not gonna fly.”
~Everyone listening to the entries, but especially Cassie’s and Eve’s reactions.
~The “interrogation” takes place in a set in the school’s theater.
~Jake’s reaction to the high schooler’s crush on Eve.
~”I was going to stand around all day waiting for you to call, and then I remembered, I have free will.”
~Jake sounds very familiar with the notion of falling for a smart girl. It sounds like he might have some experience with this. Just saying.
~Eve starts listing the words that rhyme with mash until Jenkins gives her a dirty look.
~”Oh Guardian, sorry. I’ll talk slower.” “Hey!”
~Volcano guy won.
~”Wow. First place. In . . . .” “In the category of mathmagics.” “Mathmagics. I like it.”

Well that’s it for the penultimate episode of the first season. Next week I should have the review for Loom of Fate done.

In the mean time, I’ll try to get back to my regular blogging, but I can’t promise anything.

Until then.

30 Things Question 19

19. If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

I like where I live now, due to the strong friendships I have. But, I could move anywhere else, I think I’d probably move to Italy. I love Italy. I’ve had the opportunity to go there twice and both times it was spectacular. I love the food and the cities and the weather. Plus one of my best friends lives there, so I’d get to see a lot more of her, which would be cool. So yeah, probably Italy.

Next week I'll have my review of the Rule of Three up.

Until then.

Writing Prompt Wednesday - Rag

Welcome back to writing prompt Wednesday. THis week, I decided to take my first sentence from the Writer’s Toolbox again.

Prompt: My mother was doing that thing she did. That thing with the rag in the sink.

~~~

My mother was doing that thing she did. That thing with the rag in the sink. She only did this when something was wrong. When something was really wrong.

Swallowing, I stepped fully into the kitchen and said, “Mom?” Her head jerked up, like a startled animal, before she turned and saw me. The look in her eyes scared me more than the cleaning. “Mom what is it?”

“Rose, it’s your father.”

“Papa?” My heart pounded against my breast bone and my hands felt clammy. “Whats wrong with Papa?”

Mom looked at me for a moment longer, then she dropped the rag before letting her face fall into her hands and starting to weep.

“Mom what is it?” I rushed to her, pulling her into my arms and trying to stem the flow of tears.

“I got a letter today,” she sobbed, “It said that Papa had been caught trying to steal something from the garden of that mansion on the edge of town.”

“The mansion? THe big empty one that no one goes near? WHy on earth would Papa be near there?”

“I don’t know. All the letter said was that the own of the estate was going pressing charges and imprisoning him on the estate for attempted robbery. The constable won’t do anything. Says the owner’s too powerful.”

I stared at her, dumbstruck. None of this made sense. We hadn’t even realized someone lived in that old mansion. And why would Papa be there in the first place? What could he have possibly been trying to steal?

“This can’t be true.” I said, pulling away to try and look at my mother’s face. But she wouldn’t look at me. “We have to do something.”

“What can we do that the constable can’t?” Mom demanded, tears still streaming from her eyes.

“I . . . I don’t know, but I’m going to try. I’m going to go to the mansion and demand to speak with the owner. Surely i can make them listen to reason. Papa wouldn’t steal from them. I’ll make them see that.”

“Rose no, you can’t. What if he gets angry with you too? I can’t bear the thought of losing both you and your father.”

“I’m not doing nothing. I’m going to get Papa released.”

~~~

This is the beginning of something bigger. I can feel it. In fact, I got an idea for an entire story based on this prompt. I may have to pursue it at a later date.

Come back Friday for the next 30 Things question.

Until then.

Review of the Librarians 1x09 and the City of Light: What Influences

Why do we do what we do? What makes us choose to go to the schools we go to or take the jobs we work? What influences those decisions? Often it’s myriad things that play into those decisions, but some of the biggest influences are the people we love and care about.

When I was in high school, I thought I was going to go away to college. I wanted to go out of state and get away from everything I’d known, start over in a new place. Be the time I graduated and started college, those plans had changed. Things with my family had changed a lot and I wound up going to college no more than ten miles from my family. Some of that was my decision and some of it wasn’t, but my family played a huge role in where I wound up.

This week we finally get a glimpse into what made Jake choose to stay at home, why he opted to stick to Oklahoma instead of going on the adventures he could have had as a Librarian. We also get to see Cassie make decisions based on her relationship with one of the other team members. So much of what we do is influenced by those around us, and that’s true for our favorite LITs too.

So let’s dive in.

Jake (and Mable)

This is a big episode for Jake. We learn a lot more about him in this episode than we have in the past seven episodes. We knew he was from a small town in Oklahoma and that he could have studied at at least two prestigious universities, but chose not to. We know he has a big family and they are important to him, and most likely they are they reason he stayed in Oklahoma so long, despite he longing to get out and see the world. We also know that he doesn’t trust his family with the knowledge of his gift. Which is actually a lot.

What we’ve never really known is what made him turn down those chances to study at prestigious universities? Why did he choose to stay in that little town in Oklahoma with people who never fully understood him, no matter how much they might love him, instead of getting out and traveling to see all the beautiful things he so longed to see? Thanks to a woman named Mabel, we learn those answers in this episode.

Jake immediately hits it off with Mabel. There is something about her that sparks his interest and vice versa. I think they can sense that they have things in common, even in that first meeting. Mabel sees that he is not a typical small town guy, though he’s clearly familiar with small town life, he also knows French and is intriguing in a way that a small town guy normally isn’t. That’s what draws the two of them together immediately. Later, when they get the chance to talk about their lives, they learn they have a lot in common. Family obligations, desire to travel without the ability to. They have similar backgrounds and dreams in a way that Jake hasn’t found with anyone else. And I think that’s why they connect so easily.

Mabel too had to stay in her small town, tied to the place due to “family obligations” while still dreaming of going to Paris and Budapest and Rome. Jake can relate all too well. They both dream of being able to tell stories that don’t revolve around all the same people and places they’ve always known. This shared common desire draws them together even more.

The difference between Mabel and Jake is that she didn’t have a choice in staying in Collins Falls. Due to the situation in town she literally could not leave. Jake felt like he couldn’t leave, but the truth is, he could have. Instead, he chose to stay and take over the family business because of his father’s drinking. As Mabel says, that’s a very good reason to stay. The thing about family though, is there is always going to be some obligation to them. And if you’re already scared of leaving, then those obligations make great excuses. Jake tells Mabel that he realizes now that he used his family as an excuse to not leave. He lived scared of his gift, his intelligence and used his family as a reason to hide from it. Becoming a Librarian is the only thing that changed that.

In the middle of the episode, Jake finds out Mabel didn’t tell him the whole truth about what was going on in the town. Now I’ve seen a couple of things about this in comparison to the situation with Cassie, particularly in the fact that Jake he still forgives Mabel very quickly but took a very long time forgiving Cassie. I think there are a couple of key differences in the two situations.

First, Cassie never came clean to the team. They only discovered her deception after it resulted in Flynn getting hurt and nearly dying. What’s more, until the Brotherhood put Cassie into a cell and basically revealed they’d used her, she didn’t go back on her deal to help them. Now, I love Cassie, so please don’t think I’m saying all this to hate on her. She’s probably my favorite character in the entire show. But she is flawed, like all good characters, and her flaws nearly got Flynn killed. To someone like Jake, who takes honor and trust very seriously, that’s a hard thing to forgive.

“But wait,” you say, “Mabel lied too! He should be just as mad at her.” Maybe yes and maybe now. Mabel’s situation was different. Mabel didn’t have a choice getting stuck in the town and having to try to find a way to help all the people there. Because, who would believe her if she told them that 87 people were stuck in a place between living and dying? So she didn’t tell the handsome stranger who wandered into town asking about town history the truth until she was forced to. I think in Jake’s mind, he saw her holding back information not as a selfish thing but as a form of protection for the townsfolk. And that’s why he found it easier to forgive her than to forgive Cassie, because he saw Cassie’s deception as selfish. I’m not saying I agree with him, but that could be what happened.

I think there’s a big moment between Cassie and Jake near the end, when the team decides to help. The pair exchange a look when Cassie agrees to help and Jake is clearly relieved that she is willing to do what she can for Mabel and the town. Because really, it’s Cassie’s vote that mattered most. If she had said it wasn’t possible, the team wouldn’t have been able to do anything, seeing as she was the only one capable of doing those kinds of calculations. Everything about the look he gives her says thank you. It’s a look that tells you exactly how far they’ve come in their friendship.

Cassie

This episode was problematic for me as far as Cassie was concerned. I was really struggling with her characterization in this episode. She’s so much sassier and sharper than she has been in the past episodes, that I wasn’t sure what was going on. I’m still not completely sure I figured it out, but below is my best guess at the analysis.

When Cassie and Jake first meet Mabel, Cassie gets visibly annoyed with Jake and Mabel. Of course, the question is why? What is it that’s bothering her? The first obvious guess is that she is jealous of Mabel. Jake and Mabel clearly have a connection, and one could make an argument that that bothers Cassie, especially given that she might have a bit of a crush on Jake. I mean who wouldn’t? Beyond the fact that he is an attractive male, there’s also the fact that Cassie and Jake too have a connection that is different from the rest of the team. They connected quickly in the first episode and he’s been the one who consistently gets her and helps her deal with her visions. I think just about anyone would be hard pressed not to develop some kind of attraction under those circumstances. So there certainly could be a bit of jealousy going on when they first meet Mabel.

I submit, though, that it could be something more than that. I think beyond a bit of jealousy, that Cassie possibly senses that Mabel is not telling them everything and that’s why she doesn’t particularly like the woman at first. After Mabel tells them everything, Cassie is a lot less snippy. I have basically no evidence of this, but it’s an idea anyway.

Cassie makes two decision late in the episode that directly impact Jake and I find them both interesting. The first is when the team is deciding whether to help Mabel and the town or not. As I said above, Cassie’s voice seems to be the deciding factor in that vote. She ostensibly agrees because they need to rescue Eve, but given the look Jake gives her after she says yes, I’m starting to think she said yes for him.

The second decision sort of solidifies this opinion. When she discovers that the risk is simply too great and they can’t rescue all of the townspeople she has to tell the team. During this conversation, particularly the part when she has to say it’s too big a risk and they need to shut it down, she is looking at Jake. She knows that telling them to stop this is going to affect him the most. He is the most committed to the mission and she knows that this is a blow. BUt she has to tell the truth. When she’s done and they all go to do their jobs, the two of them exchange another look, this one filled with apology on Cassie’s part and sorrow on Jake’s. In that look he is asking if there is any other way and she is telling him there isn’t and she’s so sorry. It’s with that look that we know that she did all of this more for him than for anyone else.

Ezekiel and Eve

So far, it’s been pretty clear that Ezekiel is the most grey out of our very grey heroes. If you were to put our three LITs on a white to black spectrum of goodness, Jake would be on the whiter end, Cassie would be in the middle, and Ezekiel would be closer to the dark end. He’s the thief, less concerned about morals and right and wrong than anyone else on the team. Until this episode.

In this episode, we finally get a taste of Ezekiel’s code. Everyone has a code they live by, a limit to how far they are willing to go or what they think is acceptable behavior. FOr some of us, that limit is much smaller than for others, but everyone has one and in this episode we finally see what Ezekiel’s is. Stealing objects and possessions is one thing. Stealing bodies is something else entirely. In fact, it’s so reprehensible to him that he wants to abandon the entire town because of it.

I like what the writers did with this though. They make it clear that body riding is abhorrent to Ezekiel, then they put him in a position where if someone didn’t do that, he wouldn’t have survived. If Baird hadn’t taken him over, he wouldn’t have been able to stop the townspeople from getting to Jake and Mabel. So the thing he looked at as too far was the thing that helped him save the day in the end. That’s always an interesting writing choice.

Other Random Goodness
~”I’ll tell you what, we’ll just fill in the crack you’re about to make about us and intelligent life and skip right to the job.” “Are you sure? It’s quite cutting.” “I promise to be properly offended. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have even understood it at first, but I’ll be offended later.” “Where’s the fun in that?”
~”You’re planning on selling out the human race, aren’t you?” “I will absolutely sell out the human race to our new alien overlords.”
~”We’re doing some research on town histories.” “Oh, well that make sense.” “For once.”
~The hand signals bit between Eve and Ezekiel.
~”Only you people could lose the Guardian.”
~”Colonel Baird is still on the planet.” “She’s alive? She’s safe?” “She’s . . . still on the planet.”
~”Magic is not an exact science. If it were, it would be science.”
~Cassie and Jake going back and forth about who should talk to Mable.
~The entire thing with Ezekiel trying to convince Mable that he calls optical illusions Colonel Bairds.
~Cassie is writing in her little notebook.
~”I see enough psychedelic visions on my own, so no thank you.”
~I’m pretty sure that the dam is the same one from “The Last Dam Job” in Leverage season 3.
~”So, how was your first kiss with a 130 year old woman?”
~”Well, assuming Miss Cillian and I have successfully implemented the theoretical scribblings of a mad genius using abandoned equipment that’s been in water for 100 years.” “Good pep talk.”

That’s it for this week. What did you think? Let me know down in the comments section.

Next week I’ll be reviewing the penultimate episode of Season 1, the Rule of Three. It’s a fun little episode and we get to meet Morgan le Fey, so come back for that.

In the mean time, on Wednesday I’ll be doing another writing prompt and on Friday the next question in 30 Things.

Until thin.

30 Things Question 18

18. What has been the most difficult thing you have had to forgive?

It’s actually something I’m still in the process of forgiving and it’s everything I went through with my parents when I was a teen and young adult. I don’t think I’ve fully forgiving them for what was said and done, but I’m working on it God is working on me. Someday I hope I can say that I have forgiven them completely.

Writing Prompt Wednesday - Legacy

Welcome to Writing Prompt Wednesday! I’ve been having so much fun with these first sentences, that I kept going with that. This one comes from here.

The prompt is: After she’d told me it was “high time” I knew my family legacy, my grandmother turned, pulled the box from the closet and handed it to me.

~~~

After she’d told me it was “high time” I knew my family legacy, my grandmother turned, pulled the box from the closet and handed it to me. I stared at the box for a moment, taking in the whorls in it’s grain and the well worn look of it.

“What in here?” I asked, looked back at her.

“Open it and find out.”

I bit my lip and hesitated. What if what was in the box changed everything I knew about myself? Who was I kidding, I knew it would.

Shaking my head, I slowly opened the lid of the box. In side sat a number of black and white pictures and a jeweled dagger. Frowning I pulled out the pictures and looked at them.

They were images of various people, all close in their late teens or early twenties, but who must be close my my grandmother’s age now. Both women and men stood together, some with arms slung around each other and smiling, others standing a little apart. Blinking, I realized I recognized two of the people in this photo. It was my grandmother and my grandfather, holding hands and beaming at the camera.

Looking at another one, I found yet another group shot, this one set some forty or fifty years later. This time, I quickly found my mother and father in the group, though they weren’t together. In fact, they stood on opposite sides of the picture. This struck me as strange, since they’d been nearly inseparable before they died a few years before.

Every single person in the pictures had one of the jeweled daggers.

Frowning, I looked up at my grandmother. “Who are these people? Why do they have the daggers?”

“Those pictures show the Order of the Dagger,” she replied, “Everyone in our family has been a member since its inception 200 years ago. I met your grandfather through them. Your mother and father also met thanks to the order.”

“But what does the Order do?” I asked, trying to get my head around what she was telling me.

“We are charged with protecting the world from dangerous magics and magical creatures.” She was completely serious.

I stared at her, not quite believing her, but then something clicked together in my head. Voice quivering, I asked, “Mom and Dad didn’t die in a car crash, did they?”

My grandmother looked at me for several long moments. “No Hattie. They didn’t.”

~~~

Well that was fun. I have a feeling this prompt could spawn something fun. Hopefully I get to develop it further some day.

Tell me what you think about it down in the comments.

Come back Friday for 30 Things.

Until then.