In the teaser, an adorable ufologist (I love that word) named Victor is killed, creepily, by townspeople (or is he?).
At the Annex, Jenkins says that UFOs do not exist. The Scoobies point out that Santa, fairy tales, and haunted houses are real, so why not UFOs? But Jenkins is adamant about this. The Librarians are off to the town to investigate. The immediately split up.
Jesus, splitting up again? I know it’s efficient, but it highly increases your chances of being horribly murdered and it makes the recapper’s job harder. Argh. Also I’m just going to say right here that this show is always very big on exposition and this episode had more exposition than all the others put together. Sooooo much talking. The bright spot here is that Ezekiel has already figured out how to profit from an alien invasion.
Jake meets the town archivist, Mabel, who is busy fixing a gas lamp. Mable has never left town, because of “family obligations”. Hmmmm. Jake and Mabel flirt. In French. I am charmed. Cassie is disgusted.
Eve and Ezekiel investigate in the woods with a lot of hand motions. Victor appears and is all Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and he shoves Eve into this light portal thing and now there’s a lamppost in the middle of the woods. But no Eve. It’s like Narnia meets Close Encounters.
The Scoobies interview Victor, who doesn’t remember anything. Jake interviews Mabel again. Mabel and Jake bond over not having travelled much. Mabel makes a speech about wanting to travel that is very touching except that I keep expecting her to suddenly suck Jake’s brains out through a straw. But she doesn’t, so it’s a very poignant speech. Jake takes Mabel to the clearing in the woods where Baird went “poof” so she can show everyone how the lamps work. When Jenkins touches the lamp, everyone sees Eve, but then she disappears again. Mabel promises to study the lamps as long as the Scoobies tell her everything.
Ezekiel and Cassie wander around the woods with Zeke wearing UFOs goggles so he can see the yellow brick road – seriously, that’s what it looks like. Also, I love the goggles. They do something! Cassie figures out that the road is a circuit with the energy flowing through the lamps. With the goggles on, Zeke can see Eve but not hear her. “She’s annoyed with me, so yeah, she’s fine,” he tells Cassie. Through the miracle that is hand gestures, Eve sends Cassie off to follow the circuit and has Zeke follow her (Eve, not Cassie) back into town.
Cassie follows the circuit to a dam marked Wardenclyff Falls. She is confused, since it should be called Collins Dam (‘Collins’ is the name of the town). Jake is confused because while he and Mabel are looking at files she steals one and then he finds a box of gas lamp parts which is not at all suspicious (actually, since it’s her job to fix the lamps, I don’t think it is suspicious, but Jake is full of angst about it). Zeke is confused because Eve walks him back through town and town seems to be full of multiple generations of townspeople.
Mabel gives the file she stole to Jake and tells him that the gas lamps and the town were established by…wait for it…Nikola Tesla. Cue me squeeing, Dear Daughter saying, “Who’s Tesla?” and me realizing that I have failed as a parent. Ezekiel realizes that the older group of townspeople is possessing the newer group and the body-snatching group gives chase. This is creepy. Cassie runs into a body-snatched Victor who creeps her the heck out. So far everyone who is possessed has said, “Is there a problem, sweetheart?” So has Mabel. So that’s not good. Anyway, Cassie hits Victor hard in the face with a wrench, apologizes, and runs away. I find all three actions to be endearing. Cassie finds Ezekiel and Jake in the archive, and shows off a photo she found of Mabel dated 1915. But Ezekiel looks through his nifty goggles (seriously, I love the goggles) and assures everyone that Mabel has not been bodysnatched. “I told you I had family obligations,” says Mabel, surrounded by body snatchers, who seem to like her. “This is it.”
It’s storytime! Seriously- SO MUCH EXPOSITION. In 1915, Tesla invented wireless power transmitters. The gaslamps were the prototypes. When Tesla and Mabel, who was on his team, activated the system, everyone in the town got “out of sync with the universe.” They could see and hear the world but not interact with it. Tesla modified the gas lamps to keep the energy field stable. No gas lamps = no townspeople. Mabel was insulated from the incident so instead of going entirely out of phase, she winked in and out, and Tesla was able to anchor her to her body. He made her into a human grounding wire. No word on why she doesn’t age, unless one of our sharp-eared commenters caught something I didn’t.
The rest of the townspeople usually only body snatch for a couple of hours at a time, so as not to mess up anyone’s lives. They had to steal Victor for longer (it’s been three weeks) so they could fix things. The old dam has been storing energy for a hundred years so they can use it to reset everything. The strange lights and other anomalies have been caused by their test, not UFOs. Jenkins is smug.
The Scoobies debate about what to do. Interestingly, it’s Ezekiel, the thief, who is the most outraged about the theft of bodies. The bottom line is that this is the only chance to get Eve back, so they get to work. Mabel and Jake talk about why Jake never travelled. He had family obligations. He makes a very nice speech about it but I sort of feel like we covered this last week. He and Mabel smooch. I fail to care, since this relationship has DOOM written all over it.
It’s test time. Lightning! Drama! Everything might blow up! Or not! There’s a fifty percent chance of total success and a fifty percent chance of a massive explosion. Victor fights with Cassie and destroys the main switch, so she can’t just turn the whole process off. Jake and Mabel try to turn everything off using a reset switch on the roof. Mabel is a grounding wire so she can flip the switch although for reasons that were frankly unclear to me this involves Jake carrying her through an electrical storm while she is zapped by lightning a lot. See, if I had paid more attention in science class, this scene might have made more sense, or possibly it would have made even less sense.
Victor and Ezekiel fight, and then Eve possesses Ezekiel and she and Victor fight and it’s kind of awesome. Mabel gets hit by even more lightning while she and Jake talk romantically about Paris, and she hits the override switch, but not before Eve makes it back. Poor Mabel is toast. Ezekiel had tried to tell Jake and Mabel that the whole process was working, as evidenced by Eve’s return, so that they wouldn’t shut it off, but they didn’t hear him what with all the lightning, so it’s all very ironic and useless and depressing. Mabel is dead and the townspeople are trapped between worlds again.
Jenkins says they can build a new capacitor and release the townspeople in another 100 years. Yay? Zeke and Cassie go out for a not-datey drink, and Jake uses the magic door to go to Paris in memory of Mabel. Au Revoir.
REVIEWS:
CARRIE:
I’ve noticed that reviewers for, say, The New Yorker, never say, “My experience was probably affected by my nasty headache.” Well, I’m pretty sure mine was, a little. This felt to me like a very slow, depressing, talky, filler episode even though it was Jake-centered (I love Jake) and had Ezekiel running around in goggles (I love Ezekiel and I love goggles). Also it referred to Tesla, and who doesn’t love Tesla? It was so full of Carrie Crack that I can only assume that my experience was tainted by carpet cleaner fumes. What do you say, fellow reviewers? Was this a very slow episode, or have carpet fumes made me lose my perspective?
Sarah:
I wasn’t totally on board with this one. ALL THE TALKING JESUS EXPOSITION CHRIST.
Jake’s insta-attraction was ridiculous, though the ending was very sweet. My biggest excitement was identifying that the episode would be Tesla-centered the minute someone said “Wardenclyffe.”
I’m with you, Carrie. I should have loved this episode more, but I didn’t. I wish I had, but nope. Too much talking, not enough action.
RHG:
What the hell was this episode? Like, everyone had the Idiot Ball. Everyone, BUT ESPECIALLY JAKE. There’s a woman who is deeply involved in all facets of this creepy ass town, she never leaves, and IT NEVER FUCKING OCCURS TO YOU THAT SHE’S INVOLVED IN THE CREEPY ASS SHIT? Really? Really? Where’s your genre savvy now?
There was too much exposition and not enough other things, and maybe if we weren’t doing this rushing through two episodes a night thing, this would have worked better. You know how some shows work better on a binge than one a week-by-week viewing (or when you don’t have a year to stew over plot points and instead get resolution as fast as you can say “Yes, Netflix, my life is STILL WATCHING THIS SHOW STOP JUDGING ME”)? Maybe this would have worked better with a week’s break.
What about you? What did you think of this episode?
Okay, I guess I am the only one who loved this episode. At the end, when Jake opens the doors and steps out into Paris, there were tears. Snuffling sobby tears. Oh, the shmaltz. I <3'd this episode so bad. Guess I'm easy. And like exposition. And story including Nikola Tesla.
I liked it too. Although I found the Jake love story a little off-putting. I know he is resisting his feelings for Cassie, but he still has feelings for her. Those don’t just disappear when you meet a nice looking woman with a common background. So, I was glad to see her go at the end. I did like that Jake goes to Paris as a tribute to her memory. Anyway, I do see your point about the endless exposition, it just did not bother me during the show itself.
I guess the exposition didn’t bother me so much, but I had about the same reaction to the Jake/Mabel thing. It came and went too quickly for me to care, especially since I could see it going down that way from the start.
The thing at the end with “we can try again in another 100 years”? Uh, why not see if you can apply some modern technology? I’m pretty sure capacitor design has improved at least a little in the past century, and a smart person could probably figure out how to hook up a new capacitor to the Tesla-era lamp post things. Get that puppy sorted out next week – you can just do it off screen and tell me it went fine and I’ll be perfectly happy with that resolution.