THE LIBRARIANS
Season 2

AND THE DROWNED BOOK

The Librarians have spent three months 'doing it their own way'. The clippings book warns each of a threat in a New York museum. They must find a way to work together to defend against a gigantic destructive storm and a pair of characters come to life from books.

Discord is the heart of drama and this story is set up to have the Librarians working at cross purposes so that they can come to the inevitable conclusion that they need to work together. It also sets up the new big bad for the series. There is magic enough in the world that a character who is so well written and whose story is told so often can spontaneously come to life. This is an extension of the idea from The Fables of Doom. The first of the so-called Fictionals is fair enough (even if his accent is not), but the second doesn't exactly play into the likely knowledge base of THE LIBRARIANS audience.

Aside from this, it's the usual running around, smart banter and dry asides from John Larroquette on the sidelines. It's entertaining, if not convincing, and all the actors seem to have settled into their roles as we head off on a second season we can only hope matches the first in terms of fun.

AND THE BROKEN STAFF

The Library is breached, just as it was in the second episode of the first season. The Librarians must pool their skills and knowledge to find a way to stop the Fictionals from retrieving the broken shards of Prospero's spear. Which assumes that is what the sorceror's true target is.

Having pretty much brought the team back together in the last episode, it is now time to find an excuse to break up Eve and Flynn's romance and send the senior Librarian on a mission that will keep him out of the show for a while.

It's necessary for the team to makes jokes about how often the Library gets breached since that forms the major part of this story. The team find themselves fighting against lower level Fictionals (the solution found to get around Frankenstein's monster is delightfully off the wall) and the Library's own defences. The actual heart of the Library is also a nice twist, hiding the tree of knowledge in a forest of other trees.

With the team re-established and Flynn gone, the show can get back to what it does best, coming up with fun stories crammed with nice banter. Top

AND WHAT LIES BENEATH THE STONES

Something strange is happening at the site of an oil pipeline. The Librarians investigate and find themselves tackling not only a shapeshifter that thrives on lies but also Jake's estranged father.

This episode is a bit underwhelming, dealing as it does with Jake's familial issues. Casting Jeff Fahey as Jake's father is a smart move, but the soap opera that unfolds between them is just a bit tedious, and takes up too much time from the story of the shapeshifter who thrives on lies. The smiling face effects for the creature as it mimics humans is effectively creepy, but the resolution is just a bit too pat and since the creature escaped its prison once before, leaving it locked up there and walking away seems like not too much a long-time option.

More fun and less familial angst would be appreciated.

AND THE COST OF EDUCATION

Wexler University is the educational establishment from Hell. In this case, the hell in question appears to be Cthulic as students are disappearing through rifts in space in the tentacles of a giant monster. Can the Librarians understand what fusion of science and magic is causing this to happen before the entire basketball team are taken?

This episode is aimed mainly at Cassandra and Jake. The former's love of science (previously on show in last season's episode And the Rule of Three) shines through again, whilst Jake is forced into a teaching role and finds that he quite likes it. This is again giving their characters time to grow new depths, whilst Ezekial Jones just remains the same old narcissist, which is something that helps the team out this time around. It's a shame that the enriching of characters is being shared around fairly.

The melding of science and magic and the conflict between secrecy and openness are nice enough themes, though only one is really explored to any great degree. It is, however, very disappointing that the hell to which the portal leads is basically just a nice meadow somewhere near the studios. Superimposing a CG octopus over it doesn't make it any the more dangerous looking. A hell, any hell, should look somewhat hellish. The budget can also only run to one shot of the full monster, the rest of the time it being restrained to one tentacle through the rift in a repetitive loop.

AND THE HOLLOW MEN

The problems with the Library are increasing to the point where it seems the place may be dying. Flynn finds out that this is because the spirit of the place has been incarnated into an affable amnesiac.

There are shades of the DOCTOR WHO episode The Doctor's Wife about this episode, only instead of a human body containing a Tardis, it's a human body containing a magical library. Flynn's reaction here is also not that far from the Doctor's.

There is the usual requisite amount of running around, but it is the relationship between Library and Librarian that gives this story heart. It gets a bit too schmaltzy at the end, but that was always on the cards.

AND THE INFERNAL CONTRACT

An old army buddy of Baird's is running to be mayor of a small town when an intern goes missing in unusual circumstances. Could it be that one of the candidates has engaged the aid of the Devil in their campaign?

Contractual obligations and how to break them without incurring penalties - that's the central thesis of this episode, with a side order of temptation thrown in for good measure. It's all light and breezy, but the undercurrent of how good people can become seduced by the dark side of politics, and how bad people dive in headlong, remains bubbling just below the surface. The ease with which everyone falls into an easy lie is laid bare. And it's not that many jolly romps that will include a discussion on how many deaths is too many to meet a stated goal.

John De Lancie (Q from STAR TREK - THE NEXT GENERATION pops up as the devilish owner of the contract causing all the trouble and pretty much plays it the exact same way, but since the role is that of a mischeivous imp it fits the bill.

Bright and frothy with just a hint of darkness underneath, it's a good episode with a smart resolution to the problem.

AND THE IMAGE OF IMAGE

People in London are being hit with the consequences of bad things they didn't do. The nexus of this appears to be a club called Effigy, the only place to be seen and a place where image is everything.

OK, let's get this out of the way right at the start - the outfits that the team wear to visit the club are quite risible. Nobody could possibly have thought those outfits were a good idea. If everyone else in the club looked that outlandish then we would have said OK, but everyone else is normal. This does not help matters along at all.

Which is a shame because there is so much else to like about this episode, from Stone being unable to get past the bouncers to Jenkins' stories of his history of nightclubbing through the ages to Cassandra's perpetual drunk act. The splicing of modern life and technology with an old story works far better than it should have, though the villain of the piece is so obvious (again from the silly clubbing outfit) that everyone should have spotted him from the off. Their way of dealing with threat is also nicely handled, for the second week running.

This second season of THE LIBRARIANS is firing on all cylinders.

AND THE POINT OF SALVATION

The Librarians find themselves in a military facility overrun by rage zombies. Despite their best efforts, one of them dies and time restarts from their arrival, but only Ezekial Jones is aware of the time loop. Can he find a way to get everyone through the day without death and resetting?

THE LIBRARIANS does GROUNDHOG DAY only with added anger zombies. There is actually a bit more to it than that and the revelation of the true nature of the time loop is quite fun, but otherwise this is pretty much the same 'time loop' format episode with multiple trips through the same story slowly revealing the way through to the end and the way of breaking the loop. There is firstly confusion, then bits get solved one at a time until the solution is finally reached. It's all handled well enough, with the usual amount of banter between the characters, but there isn't anything new.

This is Ezekial Jones' episode with John Kim getting his chance to have the story built around him and to show some actual character development, but sadly it seems like the writers have no idea what to do with the master thief as he gets his memory reset at the end of the epidode and all that growth is lost.

AND THE HAPPILY EVER AFTERS

Flynn returns from his artefact hunting mission to find the Librarians all living in a small town. Eve is the Sheriff, Jones is the head of the FBI station in a place too small to have an FBI station, Stone teaches every class in the nearby university and Cassandra is an ex-astronaut with a love of ponies. They are clearly under a spell, but whose spell and how can Flynn bring them back to their senses?

We've already seen a couple of episodes where the characters are other than they are, either because of fairy tales coming true or looms of fate losing their threads, but this is fun enough to get by reworking the same idea without complaint. The central mystery is just about mysterious enough to get by, but it is really the sight of seeing these characters acting in obviously ridiculous ways that is the fun of it. The banter is bright and light and Noah Wyle gets to do the confused double-take a number of times as things get ever more absurd. The introduction of a new (but not really) character is fun and we get to see a different side of a villain.

It's a set up for the big finale, to be sure, but it remembers to be a story in its own right and is all the better for it.

AND THE FINAL CURTAIN

Flynn and Eve must travel through time to Shakespearean times to find a way to stop Prospero being brought into the real world. In doing so, they come to learn something new and surprising about their adversary. In the present, Jenkins and the other Librarians chase down a series of clues that might allow them to stop Prospero in the present.

Eve Baird doesn't like time travel and tells us so a number of times, mainly because of the way the paradoxes can mess with your head. She is also shocked and appalled by what she encounters in the past and how bad most of it smells. This sojourn back in time is delightful stuff, whether it's Baird being treated as a lanky boy or Flynn's acting being appalling.

All the fun is in the past, however, as the present storyline is a straightforward mystery story that doesn't get a lot of jokes. That's fair enough, since there are enough to go around. We can also be glad that the time travel format allows for the return of a character we thought we had lost at the beginning of the last season. The show is in its pace now and we look forward to what wonders it will bring our way in the next season.