Warehouse 13.

Have you ever seen something and said, “I could have done that better”? It may have been a TV commercial, a MLB player dropping a pop up, a really bad meal, or in this case a TV show. Let me say that I have never written a TV show nor do I have the desire to, but I could have done a better job with the one I saw last night. I decided to check out the new show Warehouse 13 which airs on syfy cable network on Tuesday nights. It is available online from hulu.com. If you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, please don’t read any further as I give a lot away.

Let me start by saying that I wasn’t expecting the acting to be very good. I mean it’s not like it is a primetime network show. So the acting, while not very good, didn’t completely turn me off.
The special effects, which were less than stellar, didn’t make me dislike the show either. Even the fact that they “stole” scenes from other shows and movies really didn’t bother me. The problem was the overall plot of the episode and the story arc of a show which could have been so much better.

There is a scene where a man is controlled by someone else and for a reason that really isn’t crucial to the plot sprays gasoline from a pump and lights himself on fire. I think that scene came straight from the first season of Fringe. I may be incorrect on Fringe being the source but I know I have seen it somewhere before. There was also a “magical comb” that was used in a scene straight from the end of “Raiders of the Lost Arc”. I guess the show is supposed to be a mix of sci-fi giants like the X-files and Fringe, but it really doesn’t pull it off. Speaking of special effects, there is a very corny scene where an older guy flies through the air on a zip line inside the warehouse that looks like something out of a bad 80’s flick.

The problem with the plot of the first episode is that it simply wasn’t all that interesting. Perhaps if they would have packed the whole show into one hour instead of extending it to two hours it would have been better. The best part of the show is a warehouse where all of our countries secrets are kept, but they gave away all the mystery of the show in the first 20 minutes. The show would have been much more intriguing if they wouldn’t have shown the inside of the warehouse at all. Instead they could have given the two main characters assignments to recover all these supernatural objects and bring them back to the warehouse, but never be allowed in. At least that would have given me a reason to watch the next episode. Right now the only hope I have is that they come up with more interesting objects to find and that really doesn’t float my boat. Perhaps they will come up with some kind of story arc that will be deeply fulfilling, but I doubt it. I’ll check the show out a couple more times just to see if they can prove me wrong. Overall I give it a 3 out of 10.