Warehouse 13 Season 1

With dark and quirkiness cranked all the way up to ten, Warehouse 13 is an unexpected treat. Its premise… a warehouse for paranormal objects and the two agents who are tasked with tracking down new additions to its inventory… barely begins to explain its rich palette of whimsy, occult references, nightmarish American gothic and twisted history.

The only predictable element of Warehouse 13 is that it won’t do much that’s predictable.

The actors who portray the protagonists of Warehouse 13 are multifaceted and really good at what they do. The people who think up its sets and artifacts – from the immense CGI warehouse itself right down to a retro iPhone purportedly originally built by Philo Farnsworth in 1929, right after he invented television – clearly spend a lot of their spare time in a different universe. The photography’s abrupt and intricate. The special effects are riveting. The ending of the first season… but let us not spoil it.

As with much of what airs on the SciFi channel… ‘scuse me, I meant the SyFy channel… Warehouse 13 on DVD improves markedly with the immediate lack of a logo and various bits of advertising in the lower portion of its screen, and no incessant commercial breaks. Continuity clearly becomes it.

Even if you originally watched it when it first aired, consider that good reruns are a lot more entertaining than original reality TV.

It’s probably worth noting that the nightmarish American gothic of Warehouse 13 was filmed in Canada. We found several of the small towns posing as American locations familiar. It hardly matters – nothing that takes place after its credits roll seems entirely of this world, no matter what country it claims to take place in.

The complex story arc of Warehouse 13 is unusually intricate for a weekly series. We’ve decided to store the incoming episodes of the second season on a DVR ‘til we’re done with the first season DVDs. A ten-second recap to get up to speed just wasn’t going to do it.