(L-R): Warehouse 13's Jack Kenny and guest-stars Joel Grey and Nora Zehetner. Photo copyright of Jack Kenny.
Over the past four years, the Warehouse 13 team has done some pretty amazing things and, more than once, risked their lives to save the world. In the Season 4.0 cliffhanger We All Fall Down, Artie Nielsen, who is under the influence of an Artifact, releases a deadly disease – the English sweating sickness – into the world. Once again, it falls to our heroes to do what they do best and, in the Season 4.5 opener The Living and the Dead, try to stop this deadly pandemic from wiping out all of humanity. It is a tall order, and one that series executive producer Jack Kenny and the show’s cast and crew enjoyed taking on.
“It was very intense shooting the Season 4.5 opener, because at the end of Season 4.0 everybody was left in a fairly raw emotional state, kind of like we’ve done every year,” notes Kenny. “In the Season One finale, Pete [Eddie McClintock] and Myka [Joanne Kelly] watch Artie [Saul Rubinek] get blown up. At the end of Season Two, Myka drives off, having left the Warehouse and devastated Pete, while at the end of Season Three, the Warehouse has been destroyed and they’re standing amongst the wreckage. Last year at the end of Season 4.0, a plague is unleashed on the world and Artie is stabbed essentially by his ‘daughter’ Claudia [Allison Scagliotti].
“When we come back in Season 4.5 it’s pretty emotional for our characters, and those types of stories are the most interesting as well as the most fun to play out. So we find Claudia having to live with and deal with what she has done to Artie, and Artie having to live with and deal with what he did to Leena [Genelle Williams]. On top of that, everybody has to deal with their emotional response to what Artie has done. It’s very heavy and neat stuff, which the actors love diving into, and my thing on every set is always pacing, pacing and pacing. Keep the pace up, don’t wallow in it, just keep moving through it,
“These three things combined result in, I think, a really driving and exciting season premiere in terms of what are we going to do? How are we going to save the situation? How do we keep moving forward? How do we keep going as a family? How do we live with this kind of hardship and tragedy? It’s ironic right now that people living with tragedy is so prevalent in the news and in our world today. This past week has been so overwhelmingly filled with tragedy, and yet we get through it. We find a way to get through it and solve it.
“There’s a Mister Rogers quote where he talks about being a child and seeing bad things on TV. He’d ask his mother, ‘How do you deal with that? What do you do when you see bad things?’ His mother said to him, ‘Look for the helpers. There are always going to be people there to help.’ That’s who we are at Warehouse 13. We’re the helpers. When bad things happen, we’re the ones who go, ‘Let’s get busy and fix this.’ There are some people who can’t do that because they’re in the center of things, and there are others who won’t do it, but we’re the ones who roll up our sleeves and dive in no matter what. Even though it happened in our family, we get busy helping and fixing. I believe that that sense of optimism as well as determination is why we can go dark on this show. We can go to the darkest of places in our storytelling as long as we keep that ‘we can fix this’ attitude at the end of the stick just like a carrot.”
In the aforementioned The Living and the Dead, Pete and Myka must seek out a Columbia University professor who just happens to be an authority on an historical figure who holds the key to reversing the effects of the global pandemic unleashed by Artie. The role of Professor Sutton is played by James Marsters, who is best known to genre TV fans for his portrayal of the vampire Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
Warehouse 13 director Jennifer Lynch and Jack Kenny. Photo copyright of Jack Kenny.
“We all loved James’ work on Buffy and Angel and we were very excited about the possibility of getting him to do our show,” says Kenny. “We were looking for someone who could be sort of a bon vivant and have fun with this character, especially because we knew things would get heavier as the season went on. James is great because he brings a real sense of the contemporary and, I guess, the classical to a character. James can give you that sense of someone from a certain period in the past, and can also give you a sense of a very contemporary type of guy from today.
“That was very important with this role. We needed to get a sense that Professor Sutton was from the 1530s or 1540s and someone who lived through all that time and had a world-weariness as well as knowledge of the world, but that he was also of today’s world, if you know what I mean. James just fit like a glove into this part and we had a tremendous amount of fun working with him.”
As the world around them slowly returns to “normal” by the end of The Living and the Dead, the Warehouse agents must come to grips with the aftermath of what has transpired, to which Kenny already alluded.
“As I mentioned, the first order of business for everybody is to deal with how they feel about what Artie did,” says the executive producer, “and more importantly, how does Artie deal with that? It falls really strongly in Claudia’s as well as Steve’s [Aaron Ashmore] lap to figure out where Artie is at, how to help him, and how to bring him back and keep him moving forward. That’s a big arc for both those characters in our first four episodes, and then in episode four we add Dr. Abigail Chow [Kelly Hu]. This character arrives to take care of the B&B, but we learn that she has an ulterior motive going on as well.
“Abigail is actually there to help Artie, and really any other agents down the line who have trouble dealing with dying and coming back to life or killing someone they love. The Regents realize that these individuals have highly-charged emotional lives and there should be someone there for them to talk with, so Kelly joins us as Abigail
“So that’s what Artie is dealing with, and while Claudia is dealing with the same thing, she also starts this season to deal with her relationship to the Warehouse, and what that really means along with its dynamic and how that’s going to move forward,” continues Kenny. “She starts to recognize the powerful connection she has to the Warehouse and the fact it ‘speaks’ to her in a way, almost as if it was a live person. That plays out in a variety of ways throughout the season and, ultimately, at the end of the season in a very powerful standoff in which Claudia must grab the Warehouse reins and move into a whole new type of relationship with it and everyone around her. So we discover a lot about what her destiny is and how Claudia approaches it. Our season finale hangs a great deal on her and what she’s going to do and how she faces off against our big bad of the season.
On the Warehouse 13 set with (L-R) Saul Rubinek (Artie Nielsen), Jack Kenny and writer/supervising producer Bob Goodwin. Photo copyright of Jack Kenny.
“With Pete and Myka, again, they’re also helping Artie deal with what he went through. Myka has this very beautiful story with Artie and helping him move forward. I think it’s the second episode where she and Steve stay with Artie and try to get him to work through his feelings about Leena. Something then drops into Myka’s lap. It’s not a Warehouse thing or an Artifact thing, but just something out of life and it’s rather devastating. She ultimately shares with Pete what’s going on and the two of them navigate through this emotional minefield of how two individuals who love each other at the core can help one another and work through one of life’s challenges. That culminates in the season finale as well.
“So everyone is going through kind of highly-charged emotional issues. As for Steve, we’re going to run into one of his ex’s, probably the most important ex that Steve ever had, and that happens in episode six. We learn quite a bit about Steve and how he went through life before and how he might be going through life now. We’ll echo that relationship through Dr. Abigail down the line as well, because he’ll discuss it with her. I think the eternal question for anyone who works at the Warehouse is one of what does the rest of my life look like? Do I have a life? Am I only here? Is this my family from now on? What does my future hold being a Warehouse agent and what control do I have over that? How can I navigate thorough what is clearly not a normal existence and still have a normal, happy life?
“Those are themes that resonate throughout the entire series, and that I think will culminate in a number of ways in the fifth season. However, right now in Season 4.5, we’re dealing with loss and mortality and moving forward through those types of events while still holding on to our sense of humor. I’ll never let this show lose its sense humor, because without that it’s just too bleak. You have to keep a sense a humor throughout all of life’s events, even if becomes ‘gallows humor.’ I feel that’s one of the ways we get through stuff. As they say, comedy is tragedy plus time. I had a friend say that it’s comedy plus time plus something funny, because tragedy plus time can just be really, really sad without something funny.”
Regular watchers of Warehouse 13 know that most of the dangers encountered by our heroes in each episode are caused by an historical Artifact that has fallen into the wrong hands. In Season 4.5, they are faced with locating a bevy of new troublemaking Artifacts.
“In episode one we’re dealing with The Chinese Orchid and its poison that Artie released, so it’s all about recapturing the orchid and its toxin that is poisoning the world,” explains Kenny. “In episode two, we’re looking for an Artifact that’s causing people to be buried alive; the Earth just swallows them up. So we send Pete and Claudia on the hunt for that. Meanwhile, Myka and Steve are helping Artie, who is picking up Leena’s tasks, one of which has to do with the Spiral of Qi, a large circle in the Warehouse that is surrounded by Asian symbols. It’s where Leena would take an Artifact, sit in the center of the circle, and the Spiral would help her feel where in the Warehouse would be the safest place to store the Artifact and where it would have the least likelihood of reacting with another Artifact.
“Episode three is one of my favorites, and it’s where Pete and Myka fall into this film noir novel and they’re lost in this world of noir. The A-story is all in black and white, and the B-story has Artie, Claudia and Steve chasing after an Artifact that allows cars to drive through walls. In episode four, Joel Grey plays an old Vegas magician who stumbles upon an Artifact that allows him to levitate people. The only trouble is that the next day they shoot up into the sky, never to be seen again, so that’s kind of a downside. In the B-story, Claudia and Steve are at a racetrack in England. We found this gorgeous stable with these amazing horses to shoot this story, and in this one there’s an Artifact that belonged to Sitting Bull that helps a horse win a race, so Claudia and Steve have to hunt that down.
(L-R): Warehouse 13 production designer Franco De Cotiis and Jack Kenny. Photo copyright of Jack Kenny.
“H.G. Wells [Jaime Murray] comes back in episode five. There’s a prehistoric Artifact that is scaring people to death and she’s brought in to help. H.G. shows up in a fun way, and she and Myka are back to their old tricks. It’s a really neat episode. I like them all this season, but I’m bias,” jokes the executive producer. “Episode six is where we run into Steve’s ex, and the Artifact we’re after in this one is an amphora, which is an ancient clay vase, but when you open it, it spews molten lava. Someone is using this nefariously and we have to stop them.
“Episode seven involves a gated community, which is kind of Stepford Wives-ish. We have Cynthia Watros as our guest-star, who’s great. I worked with her for four years on [the TV series] Titus, so we’re old pals and she came to do an episode. The Artifact here was created from salt from Sodom, and it has to do with peoples’ sins. Episode seven is where [production designer] Franco De Cotiis shines again at his best. We shot some of this one at Niagara Falls where our characters are chasing a pirate. His name is Roaring Dan Seavey, who was actually a pirate back in the 1920s up near the Great Lakes. We’re saying that in the early 1900s when the contents of Warehouse 12 were being transferred from England to America, he captured one of the ships and stole Artifacts. An Artifact has surfaced that leads Artie to believe that they can use it to find the old Warehouse 12 crates. So he and the rest of the team go chasing after this pirate mystery. Polly Walker’s character [Charlotte Dupre from The Living and the Dead] returns and she’s a big part of this episode.
“With episode nine we’re rolling into the season finale, and it’s more of a chase with the big bad showing up. As for the Season 4.5 finale, every year it gets tougher and tougher to top the previous season’s cliffhanger, so we don’t try to make it bigger, we try to make it different. I directed this year’s finale, so I have a different memory of it. One of the toughest parts of this one is that we were shooting right in the middle of when Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast, so that was a bit of a pain in the butt. Fortunately, a lot of the episode is set in San Francisco, so it could be cloudy and rainy no matter what time of year it is.
“Just in terms, though, of wrapping up the season, like I say, the trickiest thing is making a satisfying episode that not only tells a terrific story, but also resolves some of the problems we’ve set up all year and creates a bigger one at the end. Those are always our marching orders on this show – how do we solve these huge problems that we’ve already set up and then create one even bigger that makes the audience think, ‘Oh, my God, how are they going to get out of this one.’ That’s an ongoing challenge, but I think we usually rise to it.”
Looking ahead to, hopefully, hearing very soon that Warehouse 13 will return for another year, what are some of Kenny’s hopes going into a fifth season? “A sixth season,” he says with a laugh. “Every TV show jumps the shark in some way because you kind of have to, and I would just hope that we can jump the shark in a way that viewers will love. I don’t want to think of jumping the shark in a bad way, but rather that we’re going to take you on an even bigger ride.
“I like taking my audience on a ride no matter what I do. It’s what we did with Titus as well as The Book of Daniel and it’s what we do here on Warehouse 13. That’s why we like to chase pirates and go down rabbit holes; we want to take our audience on a ride, and I just want to take you on a bigger ride every time. After a while you get tired of the big rollercoaster that used to scare the hell out of you, but now you’re used to it. So you need a bigger rollercoaster, and then a bigger one, followed by an even bigger one. So it’s just finding that bigger rollercoaster, while not making it too dangerous and without going overboard and really jumping the shark.”
Steve Eramo
Season 4.5 of Warehouse 13 airs Mondays @ 10:00 p.m. EST/PST on Syfy beginning on April 29th. As noted above, all photos courtesy and copyright of Jack Kenny, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
