So I’ve decided that the first series I want to review is The Librarians. I’m a huge fan of fantasy, sci-fi, and adventure. Sadly, there is a general lacking of this type of show on TV currently. So when I discovered this show earlier this year, I was pretty happy. I was even more thrilled when I found out it was spearheaded by none other than John Rogers and Dean Devlin, the brilliant minds behind one of my other favorite shows Leverage. That pretty much sealed the deal for me and I settled in for several weeks of rollicking adventures.
Now, the show has already finished its first season (and we’re waiting for word of whether they’ll get a second), but I liked it so much that I decided for my first try at this reviewing segment on my blog, I’d review The Librarians. It was just so much fun, I couldn’t resist.
So here we go. It may be a bit rough, as I’m not terribly experienced at this. Hopefully you’ll still enjoy it.
This episode is the beginnings of how this team of people first come together. It’s about merging a group of individuals into a single unit. And as we can tell from the first half of this premiere, that path doesn’t always run smooth.
The truly interesting thing about each of the characters we meet in this episode is how utterly alone they all are in their lives. They are about to get a lot less alone, but they don’t know that yet. This episode is about first gathering them all together from their singular lonely existences. Only once that happens can the real fun begin.
So where are each of them as the plot finds them? Each of our heroes is in their own state of loneliness, even if they don’t realize that they are. In fact, they all think their lives are about as good as they can make them. It takes the push of the Library for them to realize that there is so much more out there.
We meet the first of our heroes, Eve Baird, as she is preparing to lead her NATO team to recover a WMD. It’s immediately obvious that Eve is in charge and doesn’t like other people telling her what to do. When one of her team members tells her they should wait for backup, she doesn’t take it well and insists that they go in now. Once inside, Eve almost immediately splits off from her team. She’s clearly a woman who knows how to handle herself and works best alone, even if she is supposed to be leading a team. But Eve’s about to encounter something that she can’t do alone.
Just as she gets the drop on two terrorists, a strange man appears out of a steam tunnel spouting gibberish about an opal and Nazi’s and a magical safe. Eve’s no less confused than the terrorists (who she still has at gun point). The three normal people kind of forget what they were originally doing while they gape at the stranger (Flynn) as he continues to ramble and starts messing with a large strange looking crate. In fact, they don’t really do much but watch him as he fiddles with some dials and then sets off something that he says is a trap. Even demands he disarm it and he says he will, but it’d be a lot easier if the nuclear bomb would stop beeping. This brings Eve and our terrorists back to themselves.
Eve grabs the bomb while the terrorists grab their guns and what follows is a sequence of Flynn and Eve trying to disarm their respective devices while avoiding being shot. Well, actually, Flynn is disarming both at the same time. He’s working through the sequence he needs to decode while also walking Eve through disarming her nuclear bomb. Interestingly though, Even winds up helping him as much as he helps her. And we see that Eve isn’t just brawn, she has some brains too.
They both enter the codes to deactivate their devices (improbably the same code for both) then finish up their respective tasks (Eve taking out the terrorists and Flynn recovering the opal). Watching Flynn, Eve is flabbergasted. She wants to know how this strange man knew everything he knew. His only answer: I’m the Librarian. And then he disappears.
Once the adventure in Berlin is taken care of, we get basically a giant neon sign to how comfortable Eve is being by herself when she gets home. Her whole identity is wrapped up in her job. So as she climbs out of a cab and unlocks the door to her barren apartment, she’s told by her boss that she’s being forced to take a month of leave. Staring at her empty apartment, it’s clear that Eve has no idea what she’s going to do with herself for a month stuck at home. She’s so rarely there that the only furnishings she has are a folding chair and some kind of exercise machine. Even her fridge is empty, save for a single bottle of water.
Thankfully, she isn’t going to have to learn to decorate. Just as she’s about to despair, a white envelope slides under her door. Opening it, she finds a summons to the Metropolitan Public Library. With nothing to lose, Eve heads for the interview. Of course, going to this Library, she expected answers, not more questions. But all she gets is more questions.
Now, one thing to note about this. I don’t think Eve would have gone if she’d been happy in her current life. She easily could have just thrown the letter away and gone back to her life. But her curiosity go the better of her. Plus, she was about to spend a month on forced leave. Clearly she was searching for something. So she went. And getting there, despite having no idea what was going on, she jumped right in. She asks a few questions, but doesn’t object when Charlene has her sign things or takes her to a strange place with an elevator that goes down and down and down. And instead of running when she finds out about magic, she accepts that it’s real. The Library needs her expertise, and she accepts that.
And in accepting that, she accepts working with Flynn. Another person who has become used to being alone.
Now Flynn is an interesting case, in that he’s not actually a main character for the show. He was the main character of the movies the show is based on, but he’s not going to be around for the entire season. Still, he’s an important part of the universe and has an influence on everything that happens and particularly on Eve, so it’s worth exploring.
Charlene and Judson both tell Eve that Flynn has been alone for a long time, 10 years in fact. So he is not interested in having a new guardian. He’s less than interested. He downright refuses to keep her around. He tells Eve to leave and never come back. But Eve isn’t one to take no for an answer, and she desperately needs answers because nothing about her life makes sense anymore. So she follows Flynn and insists that he tell her what’s going on.
While talking to Flynn, Eve meets Judson, who gives her a little more information about being a Guardian and Flynn. Flynn having to survive by himself for so long has changed him, but the Library has decided that he needs Eve. And Eve needs a job, so she rolls her shoulders and dives in. Something about Flynn and this place is calling to her, so she steps into Flynn’s murder investigation (he’s looking for information about the man who was killed earlier in the episode). And surprisingly, Flynn gets some inspiration from talking to Eve. Turns out, he might need her after all.
The pair discusses various things and eventually arrive at the conclusion that someone is killing potential Librarians, but three top ranked candidates have not been killed yet. They decide that they need to save these three and see what all the fuss is about. Flynn, still insisting on working alone, tries to ditch Eve, but she’s having none of it. So they go to New York to find the first candidate.
Just before they stumble upon the first candidate (Cassandra Cillian) they have a short discussion about why Flynn insists on working alone, and it’s very enlightening. All of his partners are either gone or dead. They’ve all left him eventually. So, after a while, he decided it was just better to be alone. And now, he doesn’t know how to be anything else. So he’s going to fight pairing up with Eve with everything in him.
This brings us to our first candidate, Cassandra Cillian. As I said before, all of these individuals, all of our heroes are in various states of aloneness. Cassandra is alone by necessity. She’s working as a janitor at a hospital when she is clearly far smarter than that. But very quickly we see why. She’s a synesthete and she has full on hallucinations if she uses her considerable brain power too much. In addition to her superb intelligence, we’ll learn later that she also has a brain tumor that is responsible for heightening her synesthesia and will one day kill her.
Now, I’m not a super intelligent person nor do I have a brain tumor or any kind of life threatening illness, but I do know that the combination of being extremely smart and having a life threatening condition is something like a perfect storm of having people not know what to do with you. I imagine that seeing and processing the world in a way that is different from what is considered normal is rather off putting to people who don’t experience the world in that way. That’s bad enough. But then, combining that with a life threatening illness, something that no one knows how to react to or deal with, that’s the perfect storm of loneliness right there. We don’t know much about Cassandra yet, but we do know that she is probably very lonely. She’s probably been treated as a freak for most of her life. So when two people show up and don’t freak out that she’s hallucinating, she jumps at the chance to join them. They are probably the first people in her life to simply accept her.
Once they've collected Cassandra, Eve and Flynn decide to split up to collect the other two candidates, since they are on opposite sides of the world. Flynn sends Eve to Oklahoma and he heads to Geneva.
Our next stop in gathering our group of loners is Geneva with Flynn. He’s going after Ezekiel Jones. We meet Mr. Jones as he is in the process of completely a heist of a museum. Ezekiel is just as alone as the rest of our characters, and just like the rest of them, he’s certain he’s happy. In fact, he’s probably most certain of this. He doesn't want to come to the Library. He continues to be uninterested in joining Flynn until Flynn tells him that he (Flynn) can help him figure out why someone wants to kill him. Since Ezekiel is all about Ezekiel, he agrees to go along. It’ll take a little more than the promise of magic and adventure to get him.
Our final candidate is found in Oklahoma at a bar. Jacob Stone, a cowboy with a secret. This is the most interesting case of a lonely person yet in this show. Everyone else up to this point has been shown on their own, working alone, without friends or family. Not so with Jake. He’s out enjoying an evening of beers with his boys. They laugh and joke and interact with the pretty cowgirls. And Jake seems happy. He has a job and a purpose. But our first clue that he isn’t as happy as he seems is when a strange woman in black walks in. He and his boys immediately notice and one of them comments that she isn't from around there. Jake’s reply is telling. He says no she isn’t. She’s from somewhere interesting. This tells us that Jake finds his current life boring. His home isn’t interesting. It’s home.
Another clue to Jake’s dissatisfaction with his life comes in his reply to his friends question about his dad. He says he’s too drunk to work and too stubborn to die. Clearly there’s some bad blood there. But we won’t really get more information on that until later in the season.
We don’t get a full reveal of just how different Jake is until he actually goes to talk to the stranger at the bar. When his friend comes back having struck out, Jake asked what happened. His friend tells him the girl is demanding that any guy who wants to talk to her first has to tell her what her tattoo means. Jake decides to give it a try. At first, he puts on an act, saying that the language is “I-talian” maybe and the woman loses interest. So, after a quick look around to make sure no one is paying attention, Jake starts reading the tattoo. And immediately the stranger (Lamia we learn) perks up. Then she tries to kill him.
Thankfully Baird shows up and stops her. She and Jake then proceed to get into a bar fight with Lamia and her ninjas (in Oklahoma?) before Eve drags him out of the bar. As they drive away, we finally learn what Jake’s been working so hard to hide. He’s no ordinary cowboy. He has an IQ of 190 and turned down scholarships to two prestigious art institutes to stay home and work on an oil rig. In his spare time, he publishes scholarly papers on art history under a pseudonym. So despite being at home with his family, Jake is just as alone as the rest of our heroes. He just hides it better.
Now that all of the candidates have been gathered up, they head to the Library and figure out why people are trying to kill them.
The really cool and interesting thing about this episode is that it starts the group on the journey that they are going to be taking for the rest of the season from individuals forced to work together to a well-functioning unit who compliments each other with each person providing a crucial part of the puzzle. We get to see the first steps (and first stumbles) toward this throughout the rest of this episode.
The group converges on the Library and meet Flynn. He tells them that they don’t have much time but lets them ask questions. All of them are in awe of everything they are seeing. After a few initial questions, we start to learn more about what has driven these characters into their solitary existences. First, we find out about Cassandra’s brain tumor. It’s what has cross wired all five of her senses and supercharged her synesthesia. And it will eventually kill her. She was in the hospital for it when her summons to the Library came, so that’s why she didn’t show. Stone didn’t show up because he already had a job. And Ezekiel just threw his out. So now we know why they didn’t show up. Next we get to learn why they’re needed now.
Flynn, Eve, and the other three gather in the work room to try and figure out what is going on. It’s the first time that we get a taste of all of them working together and it’s great. Each person brings something to the discussion that they wouldn’t have if that person weren’t there. This theme continues throughout the rest of this episode and it’s fun to watch. Stone recognizes the painting, Ezekiel tells them where it is currently, and Cassandra tells them how quickly they can get a flight out. And in doing this, they figure out why they were being targeted. Because they can find what the Serpent Brotherhood is after. So off to Munich they go.
In Munich, they head to the museum and we see that they aren’t quite ready to fully trust each other yet. Ezekiel asks why they are looking for a British crown in a German museum and Jake clues him in, before realizing that he shouldn’t know any of that as a simple cowboy and tries to pass it off as something he heard on the radio. No one buys it of course. It’s fun to note that that’s pretty much the last time Jake tries to hide his expertise.
Inside the museum shows us once again that all of the parts of the team are needed to solve the mystery. Eve is needed because she notices Lamia and the Brotherhood are there so she goes off to deal with them. Without her, the Librarians wouldn’t be able to figure out the next part of the puzzle. Of course, they are so caught up in the mystery that they don’t even notice she’s gone. Instead they work on what the painting means. And each of the Librarians figures out a key part of the puzzle. Jake points out that the painting is a fake and painted much later than it says it was. Ezekiel notices that the frame is bolted into the wall so the painting wouldn’t be able to be moved without demolishing the wall. And Cassandra notices that there’s a binary code on the frame. Flynn takes all this information and figures out that this is all important and leads to something interesting. So they head off to figure out where. Eve finishes taking care of the thugs and joins the rest of the team just in time to find out that they need to head into the Black Forest.
In the Black Forest we get another lovely scene showing that these people need each other more than they think they do. It starts with a conversation that Eve and Flynn have showing that really, they aren’t so different. Neither of them particularly likes being around their friends and family, they prefer to be working and on missions. And they get that about each other. They get on a lot better than they thought they would. It’s surprisingly refreshing for both of them.
Of course, this moment is quickly forgotten as Flynn spots what they’ve been looking for: a henge (which apparently is unheard of that part of the world). They decide to split into two teams. Eve and Ezekiel go to stall Lamia and her team while Flynn, Cassandra, and Jake work to decipher the meaning of the henge.
This is where we get another taste of how these people can help each other. Cassandra starts calculating and hallucinating as Jake and Flynn watch, both in awe as she does incredibly complex equations in mere minutes. But the more equations that she does, the worse the hallucinations get until she’s overwhelmed by them. As Flynn finishes finding what Cassandra’s calculations led him to, Jake rushes over and helps Cassandra deal with the aftermath, giving he a trick for not getting lost in her hallucinations that he learned from an artist he read about who also had synesthesia. It works beautifully and Flynn just nods. And once more we see that only by working together can they accomplish what they’re meant to do.
Once Jake finishes calming Cassandra down, Flynn finds what they’re looking for and they realize they need a cutting torch. Thankfully, Cassandra’s picnic has all the ingredients they need. Flynn quickly puts together a cutting torch out of a cucumber, prosciutto, and some fire. Jake and Cassandra are suitably impressed.
Back at the helicopter, Eve and Ezekiel work together to disable Lamia’s helicopter and buy Flynn the time he needs. After assessing the situation, Eve asks Ezekiel if he can hotwire a helicopter. While he gets to work doing that, she fends off Lamia and her goons. It takes a little work, and when Flynn arrives to stop Lamia from killing Eve, we see once more that they really do need each other. There’s no way that he would have been able to stop Lamia and get the prize by himself.
Back at the henge, Jake and Cassandra have recovered none other than the Crown of King Arthur. Once everyone meets back up, the group quickly retreats back to the Library to recoop make sure they’ve placed the Crown in safety.
Unfortunately, Flynn still isn’t ready to accept that he might need their help. It’s going to take something a little more strenuous than just outrunning the Brotherhood to convince him that the potential Librarians are needed. And he’s about to meet that something.
Back at the Library, the candidates are all talking about how they need to head back to their real lives (or at least Jake is) when suddenly an alarm starts going off. Someone is trying to get into the Library. Flynn is sure they won’t be able to, unless someone from the inside lets them in. And that’s exactly what happens, much to his horror.
The group splits up once more, Flynn to save the Crown and the rest to find Charlene. And the tenuous unity they had just created starts to fall apart. First Jake accuses Ezekiel of letting the Brotherhood in. Ezekiel quickly turns the accusation back on Jake, but when both are targeted, they decide neither of them is to blame. Sadly, Flynn is about to discover their traitor and their unity will really fall apart.
Flynn arrives at the Crown to find Lamia already there, with Cassandra. At first, it looks as if Cassandra is Lamia’s prisoner, but Flynn soon learns that Cassandra is in fact the person that let Lamia in (the Brotherhood promised to heal her and she believed them. Quite possibly one of the saddest and most understandable reasons for her actions possible). With this revelation, chaos truly descends on the Library. Charlene and Judson decide to do something to protect the Library, while Flynn tries to fight Lamia and loses, receiving a deadly wound from Excalibur in the process. As the episode closes, Lamia gives orders to seize as much of the loot in the Library as possible, but first, to kill Flynn, much to Cassandra’s horror.
What’s interesting about the end of this episode is that Cassandra really was horrified. She didn’t realize how bad things were going to get. She didn’t know Lamia would try to kill Flynn and the rest of the people who she (Cassandra) had started coming to think of as friends over the past few days. She made the decision to let them in before she knew these people. And her fear of death was greater than her love of any connection she might have felt with them. Thankfully, by the end of the next episode, this will change, but we have a rocky road to walk before we get there. And her actions won’t be free of repercussions, both within the team and without.
Loneliness is a powerful feeling, and something that we all try to avoid in one way or another. Unfortunately most of the time, we only succeed in convincing ourselves we aren’t lonely when really we couldn’t be more alone. That’s what each of our heroes was feeling before they were thrown together in this first adventure. But now they’ve found a place where they really do belong. They just have to figure that out before it’s too late. Next week, we’ll get to watch them do that.
Random Things I Liked from this Episode
-“See that blue wire?” Eve starts to pull the wire. “Don’t touch the blue wire.” “Arg! Start with don’t! Start with don’t!”
-“Improbably, both.”
-Charlene was very excited that Eve had to sign a bunch of forms.
-Eve signed all the forms without even looking at them. She is a woman on a mission.
-“Ninjas? In Oklahoma?” then “Ninjas possibly.” “In Oklahoma?” “That’s what I said.”
-Jake saying that their trek through the Black Forest is nothing like his job. Then it turns out it is exactly like his job.
-I love how excited Jake gets over all the magic stuff. He’s like a kid in a candy store. “Is that a flying sword? He’s got a flying sword!”
Next week I’ll review 1x02 And the Sword in the Stone. Before that though, on Wednesday, I’ll start my new series of drabbles developed from various writing prompts. And on Friday, 30 Things will continue.
Until Then.
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