hg wells

Syfy's 'Warehouse 13' back for a second season with more supernatural hijinks

hg wells

It will come as no major surprise to fans of "Warehouse 13" that Artie Nielsen (Saul Rubinek) somehow survived the seemingly lethal blast that enveloped him in the final moments of season one.

Happily for Artie, this is season two, and this is "Warehouse 13." Here, weird is routine, and best of all, Artie's return is the starting gun for a series of strange developments that will leave viewers wondering exactly what's going on.

That's the point here, that viewers should spend much of the show wondering. Because when things are working, that's what the characters are doing, too.

For those who just arrived, Warehouse 13 is a super-secret facility where the government stores historical artifacts too dangerous to be accessible to the public.

Since these artifacts have vast power, there's always someone who would like to liberate one.

Last year that included the evil McPherson (Roger Rees), who gave the show its finest bad guy and almost managed to throw the blame on one of Artie's assistants, the strange but endearing Claudia (Allison Scagliotti).

Claudia plays the off-center computer genius found in virtually every sci-fi show these days, and her arrival kicked the show up a notch last season.

Still, the action mostly revolves around detectives Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly), who got shanghaied into being Artie's A-team, resisted fiercely and then decided they really liked it.

This is the part of the show that's not weird at all. In fact, it's the setup for half of the cop shows on television. Pete and Myka are a male-female detective team solving odd cases through their different skill sets, while also trying not to acknowledge their growing romantic tension.

While they work this well-worn territory nicely, they also need Artie and an imaginative set of adversaries to keep the show lively.

Tonight, for instance, they find themselves dueling with H.G. Wells, many of whose outlandish science fiction imaginings subsequently came true.

They're not up against a runaway time machine here, though. They're up against what seems to be the actual H.G., who turns out to be nothing like even readers of H.G. Wells books imagined.

Meantime, Artie apparently is unchastened by his near-incineration experience, remaining as over-the-top as ever.

McPherson is still on the loose, too, so everyone needs to find him before he can carry out his various nefarious agendas.

To be as much fun as it strives to be, "Warehouse 13" can't be just a cop show with a gimmick. It needs to make the gimmick interesting and fun. Season one was promising and season two seems to be staying on track.