“Warehouse 13” — No Pain, No Gain episode review

Claudia and Mrs. Frederic witness the birth of an artifact in this week’s Warehouse 13

This week’s episode began with Claudia and Myka on an artifact retrieval mission in Japan. Despite last episode’s warning that artifacts have consequences, they still use a gale-force pinwheel in their snagging and bagging efforts. Myka is interrupted by a phone call from her sister, Tracy, who’s pregnant.  To be honest, I had completely forgotten Myka had a sister at all since she never mentions her, but maybe we’ll finally meet her now.

At the Warehouse, Artie shows the team footage from a hockey game in Toronto. One of the players goes down hard, breaking his arm in the process, but then magically heals and goes on to toss an opposing player right through the glass. It’s got to be an artifact, so Pete and Myka are off to investigate.

Claudia, on the other hand, has been left a mysterious invitation to join Mrs. Frederic for lunch. She casually mentions all the weird feelings she’s been having lately. Odds are it’s due to Steve experiencing pain on his end, but Artie immediately jumps to that vision of her stabbing him.

In Toronto, Pete and Myka are posing as hockey league officials here to test for steroid use in the players. Larry Kemp (Timothy Omundson), the team owner, lets them into practice to talk to the team. The artifact-affected player, Mike Madden (Mike Dopud), tries to give Myka his “most eligible bachelor in Toronto” shtick but she’s not having it. He insists he’s clean; Myka even neutralizes his gold necklace for good measure, but it’s not the artifact.

Back at the Warehouse, Artie lies to Steve about going to do inventory when he’s really frantically checking for more missing artifacts. Considering Steve has the ability to sense when someone’s lying, that probably wasn’t the best choice on Artie’s part. Steve follows Artie out into the depths of artifact storage, where Artie discovers another artifact (Primo Levi’s scarf) has been replaced with a black diamond. Artie half-explains the situation, leaving out the Brotherhood and the astrolabe part, and he and Steve set off to find other artifacts that could be missing.

At the hockey rink, Pete and Myka are examining an x-ray of Mike’s arm given to them by Larry Kemp. Myka, who was pre-med before she was pre-law before she was a Secret Service agent because of course she was, can tell that the x-ray doesn’t match Mike’s actual arm. The x-ray shows a congenital condition where the bones of the hand are fused, but she shook Mike’s hand and his are not. They track down his real x-rays and discover that his muscle and cartilage have simply grown around his broken bones to support them; he’s not really healed.

Pete and Myka then sneak into the locker room to neutralize all of Mike’s gear while he’s in the shower. Nothing is the artifact, though, but further speculation on their part is broken up by the sounds of fighting in the shower. Pete walks in on one of the other players harassing Mike about his sudden strength, but Mike didn’t seem to have any of it now. Pete tells Myka about it, and their new theory is that someone else is using an artifact on Mike.

Claudia meanwhile is meeting Mrs. Frederic for lunch in Minneapolis. They’re not actually there to eat, though; Mrs. Frederic insists on going for a walk instead so they can talk about Claudia’s relationship to the Warehouse. Mrs. Frederic shows off the new gray streak in her hair rather ominously as she talks about Claudia getting a glimpse of her destiny. Mrs. Frederic is intimately connected to the Warehouse, but it isn’t clear that she knows what Artie did to it. If he gives in to Adrian and resets time, Mrs. Frederic will die along with the Warehouse again. Is that why she’s passing on some wisdom to Claudia now, because she senses this? It’s a question that’s not answered tonight, but I’m hoping to find out soon.

In any case, on their walk, Mrs. Frederic gets Claudia more in tune with her surroundings, and Claudia brings them to a nearby jewelry store. Specifically, she knows one woman inside is about to be very important, but she doesn’t know why. We get our answer soon enough, as a gunman bursts through the door to rob the place, and the woman gets between his bullet and an innocent baby.

She doesn’t die, but the bracelet she was wearing glows green for a moment afterwards – it’s an artifact now. Mrs. Frederic explains that not all artifacts come from significant people (defined by Claudia as people with Wikipedia pages); they simply come from the meeting of a person, an object, and a moment. For now this woman keeps her artifact, but it would certainly be interesting if it became dangerous and cropped up again on the show.

In the Warehouse, Artie is growing more and more panicked as he finds only black diamonds where his most important artifacts once were. “Someone is undoing my life’s work!” he cries, as if that weren’t the exact wording of Adrian’s threat to him. Steve tries to inject some calm into the situation and gets Artie to think of an artifact that they could still find even if it’s been taken. Turns out, there is one- the McCoy rifle. Artie retrieved that one, but not the Hatfield rifle, which they can use to locate the McCoy rifle and, hopefully, the other stolen artifacts.

Back in Toronto, Pete and Myka continue their investigation of Mike. Larry denies having any influence on him, and unknowingly gives them their next clue: Mike only performs like this at home games. Considering Mike was wobbly at practice, it’s not the arena, so it has to be one of his screaming fans. Pete and Myka plan with Mike to have him pretend to be injured during the game so they can watch fan reactions. They’ll also collect information from fans in a raffle to win a dinner with Mike so they can pick which fans are die-hard enough to be suspects.

Mike and Myka share a moment when it turns out he’s an opera fan too, but there’s no time for romance right now considering the whole sting operation they’re trying to put in place. Pete teases Myka about her chemistry with Mike, chalking the whole thing up to that romantic comedy plot where the lovebirds hate each other at first but then realize their true feelings. Not to read too much into this or anything, but that sounds a little like the direction the writers could have taken Pete and Myka from the beginning (though I’m glad they didn’t). Pete assigns himself the role of sassy best friend and they head off to prepare for the game.

Just before the game starts, Pete collects raffle tickets from the fans as planned, but Mike and Myka share an unplanned good luck kiss that gets some of the female fans fuming. Pete rifles through everyone’s bags as the game gets underway, only to be caught red-handed by a little boy whose father rushes him away from the guy with his hands on some woman’s key chain. At that moment, Mike takes a spill, feigning injury, but Myka seems to be the one affected – she runs to the bathroom, one hand on her stomach.

She calls Pete from the ladies’ room in a panic – she’s suddenly become hugely pregnant. I am not usually a fan of the whole mystical pregnancy trope, but considering the short-lived and overall humorous tone taken with Myka’s situation this one didn’t bother me quite as much.

Steve and Artie are tracking down the McCoy rifle using the landmarks Steve saw through the Hatfield rifle’s sights. Their trip in the obligatory product placement they’re driving is interrupted by Myka’s distress call about her pregnancy. Artie suggests that the artifact in question may be a wish-fulfillment one instead of a healing one, but he can’t talk much – they’ve found the garage the McCoy rifle is in.

When Artie flings open the door, the rifles automatically start shooting at each other, so he quickly slams it closed again. Artie doesn’t understand why Steve would be angry about the possibility of getting shot, considering he can’t die now. Steve confesses his pain connection with Claudia to Artie, who’s relieved just to have an explanation for the weird things she’s been feeling. Beyond suggesting Steve maybe find a way to be alive without the metronome, Artie doesn’t seem too concerned about actually informing Claudia of what’s going on. I’ve got a feeling this is going to blow up in their faces when Claudia finds out about her connection with Steve and that they hid it from her.

Back at the ice rink, Pete confesses to Myka that it wasn’t her wish the artifact was fulfilling – it was his. When he saw that little kid in the stands, he got to thinking about how he might never have kids with the life he leads, but then he realized someone already shared that life with him. So, boom, pregnant Myka. The woman who owns the keychain has already left, but thanks to the raffle, they know where her house is.

Clearly Pete’s desire to have a family of his own is something that is going to have to be dealt with later, since now they’re entering Judy’s (Kirsten Nelson) house. She’s got doctored pictures of her and Mike together on her table, along with other personal mementos, including her grandfather’s ashes and obituary. Turns out he helped his friend survive World War II, and Pete thinks the dog tags on the keychain might be the artifact. Myka, being pregnant and all, has to use Judy’s bathroom and discovers that all her toiletries are missing – she’s not coming back.

Sure enough, Judy holds Mike up in the parking lot and convinces him to get in the car with her. And by “convinces,” I mean “wishes to un-mend his arm and threatens him into submission.” Pete and Myka correctly guess that she’s taking him up to her grandfather’s cabin, and they head there in pursuit.

Artie and Steve, meanwhile, have subdued the rifles and have discovered the rest of the artifacts in the garage. Artie also finds a box of black diamonds, but he chooses not to share that information with Steve, and asks that he not tell the others about this whole thing either. All this secret-keeping is not going to end well for Artie, I can feel it. Steve notices some shipping supplies over in the corner – this may not be all the artifacts they came for. And with that cliffhanger, this plotline ends.

At Judy’s cabin, she’s wished Mike’s arm to be mended again and brought him hot cider. He’s clearly freaking out, but he keeps a clear enough head to toss the cider in her face when she asks for a kiss and make a getaway. Well, until she rebreaks his knee. Before she can really start in on the torture wishes, though, she notices Pete sneaking around outside the cabin. She grabs an ax and her keychain and heads out the back.

Pete catches up with her too late – she’s already taken Myka hostage. She wishes for Pete’s lungs to collapse, and he drops to the ground, gasping. When Judy goes to check his pulse, though, he snatches the keychain away from her and Myka gets in a clean shot with the Tesla. Pete neutralizes the dog tags, and everyone returns to normal. Unfortunately for Mike, “normal” means injured.

At the hospital, Pete theorizes that the dog tags didn’t work on his lungs because they only work on people you love: Judy’s grandfather used them on his friend, Judy used them on Mike, and Pete used them on Myka, though he tries to back his way out of that last bit. There’s no denying it, though; they have the strongest partnership out of everyone. Their plotline for the episode ends with Myka catching Pete staring wistfully at a new father and his baby girl out in the waiting room.

Speaking of family, Mrs. Frederic and Claudia’s adventures end at an old folk’s home, where they visit Mr. Frederic. Not Irene’s husband, though; her grandson. That’s certainly an interesting development. She’s not immortal, since she can die with the Warehouse, so how is this possible? And is this something Claudia’s going to have to deal with if she becomes the new Mrs. Frederic?

I’m left with a lot of questions, but in a good way. This episode introduced a potential season-long theme of family and moved quite a few big plot points forward, all while keeping its sense of humor. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the rest of the season to unfold.