Review: Warehouse 13 1.10 – “Breakdown”
Original Airdate: September 8, 2009
Screencaps from Forgotten Secrets.
This episode mostly takes place in the Warehouse. Artie is going away to take the agents’ reports to a higher undisclosed authority than Mrs. Frederic, so Pete and Myka have some down time. Meanwhile, Claudia has been left some chores to do. However, her good intent goes wrong — horribly wrong — as an automated vacuum goes haywire and causes a snowball effect that ends up slowly disabling the neutralizing field that keeps all of the artifacts from acting up and going off on their own accord.
Meanwhile, Artie is in his own type of trouble as he is facing a tribunal made up of the Regents, the upper eschelon of Warehouse 13 management. We learn that McPherson used to be Artie’s partner and that he is planning something big and it is up to Artie to stop him, but the Regents are somewhat on the opposition about it.
Back at the Warehouse, Pete and Myka have to go on a rescue mission to find Claudia, who’s gotten herself lost. Then they get stuck in a copy of Leena’s B&B, which just so happens to have an M.C. Escher-like configuration. After some quick thinking, they get free and realize they have to get to what Claudia calls the “Gooery,” which is where all the neutralizing goo is cycled through. The Agents and the Techie have to cross the Dark Vaults, an area that has to be entered and exited carefully. While in the “danger zone” of the Warehouse, Pete stumbles upon the typewriter of Sylvia Plath, which drains the life of whoever gets too close to it. So naturally Pete gets a little too close and his life is almost sucked right out of him.
In the end, they manage to avert all sorts of mayhem with just 30 seconds left and the team grows closer together, like a family of sorts, and it ends with the team, minus Artie, going out for Mexican food.
I am quite satisfied with this episode. The way that they handled the dynamics between Pete, Myka, and Claudia seemed to set up, at least to me, that Claudia is in training to become a senior member of the Warehouse later on. I particularly enjoyed the bits at the end where Claudia and Myka have a sisterly-like moment, echoing a similar one in “Duped” between Pete and Claudia. The other that I enjoyed was the reveal of the Regents to be nothing more than people with ordinary jobs, like the founding fathers of the U.S.A. On the other hand… oh, who am I kidding, there is nothing bad about this episode.
