Suspension of Disbelief: Warehouse 13

Suspension of Disbelief is a weekly feature, in which we review movies, books, TV shows, and other popular culture for the skeptical teen.

TV Show Title: Warehouse 13
Genre: Science Fiction
Leads: Joanne Kelly, Eddie McClintock, Saul Rubek, and Allison Scagliotti

Rating:     
4 out of 5 artifacts

Review:  Remember the storehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (which, if you haven’t seen it, is basically a giant building where they crate up the Ark at the end of the movie, never to be messed with again)? I know my first reaction on seeing that was, “Ooh… what’s in the other crates?” Warehouse 13 takes a very similar storage, and lets us look inside.

I’ve been watching this show since it premiered over two years ago, and couldn’t pick an episode to review. A typical episode follows the team of government agents who work at Warehouse 13, as they follow a “ping” and try to recover Artifacts- historical objects that have picked up an aspect of the person or environment they were in. Some examples might include Edgar Allen Poe’s quill, a magical ancient Egyptian  scarab, and Walt Disney’s paintbrush. Usually, these Artifacts cause a lot of trouble when they pop up… “snagging, bagging, and tagging” them is never as easy as it sounds. The show combines a mystery with a cop show with a history documentary  and throws a little Indiana Jones into the mix. Most seasons, so far, there has also been an overarching opposing force: someone who knows about the Warehouse, and wants to use the Artifacts inside for some nefarious or misguided purpose of their own.

One of my favorite characters in the show is Myka Bering, one of the agents at Warehouse 13. She’s the logical one, and a fairly good skeptic. In a recent episode, while trying to track down a person with an artifact, she said, “If there’s no explanation, if it just can’t be done, then it must be an artifact. There’s no other way.” It’s a brilliant use of Occam’s Razor, and a fairly usually occurrence in the show. It’s easily one of my favorite TV shows… in some ways, it’s still getting better even halfway through the third season, and I expect that will stay true into the future. I highly recommend it.