TV Review: WAREHOUSE 13 – Season 3 – “The 40th Floor”

By SEAN ELLIOTT / Contributing Writer

Posted: September 2nd, 2011 / 08:45 AM

Stars: Eddie McClintock, Joanne Kelly, Saul Rubinek, Genelle Williams, Allison Scagliotti, Aaron Ashmore, Jaime Murray, Ashley Williams
Writer: Benjamin Raab & Deric A. Hughes
Director: Chris Fisher
Network: Syfy, Mondays @ 9 PM
Airdate: August 29, 2011

With only 3 episodes left of the season past this point, WAREHOUSE 13 definitely raises the stakes this week with, “The 40^th Floor.” The whole subplot with the anti-Warehouse squad seems to be boiling to a head that is just about to completely explode.

Sally Stukowski (Ashley Williams) at the point the episode starts has been kidnapping Regents, (the overseers of Warehouse 13…think of them as upper level management) torturing them with an artifact and then killing them once she has the information she needs.

She already was on the radar of the Warehouse 13 crew prior to this, but now she is a priority to bring in for questioning and to find out who she works for and with. The crew takes her down and Mrs. Frederic (CCH Pounder) steps in herself to carry out the interrogation. Meanwhile Myka (Joanne Kelly) and Artie (Saul Rubinek) find themselves trapped in an office building that is slowly collapsing due to the use of an artifact that is eating away at the structure of the building. Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Claudia (Allison Scagliotti) are hot on the trail of the spray paint artifact, but they cut it awfully close when it comes to saving the day. One of the Regents gets killed and the protective bracelet that acts as a last measure to keep Warehouse 13 safe passes on to a Regent named Jane (Kate Mulgrew) who also happens to be Pete’s mom!

Again, yes Trekkers and Trekkies can titter with excitement that yet another STAR TREK alum has joined this show. In fact it looks as if Kate Mulgrew just might become a series regular from this point forth, owing to the fact that her character is incredibly important to the continued existence of the Warehouse itself. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, with her being Pete’s mother. It means that his whole life has been connected to the Warehouse without him knowing it, and it remains to be seen if that is a good or bad thing.

Jinks (Aaron Ashmore) makes the unfortunate decision to whip a gun on Mrs. Frederic in this episode so for now he is going bye-bye. I hope this is a temporary thing and he comes back because I love the character, and I’ve really enjoyed having multiple teams out in the field tracking down multiple artifacts in one episode.

The mysterious man in the wheelchair has poor murdering Sally Stukowski put down like a rabid dog for her failure to kill everyone that she was supposed to, and her partner put the spray can to his own head in a form of nasty suicide, so the bad guys’ team is down by two. Anybody else think that the man in the wheelchair just might be Anthony Michael Hall? It sure sounds like him to me, and the back of the head looks like his hair. It wouldn’t surprise me in any case.

So it will be interesting to see what else trouble the little robot bugs are creating within the Warehouse itself. The gloves malfunctioning (as pointed out by an astute viewer last week…and yes I had somehow completely missed the reason they were malfunctioning) is only the first step in probably a much larger degradation of the Warehouse and all of it’s operating systems.

The season is picking up speed and next week looks like a doozy!