When the topic is artifacts, we can all agree that there it comes as no surprise that “There's Always a Downside.”  The question then becomes: is the downside worth the upside?

Hugo Returns

In Artie’s case, the downside of using The Astrolabe is that he has released an evil, or at least Brother Adrian seems to be wrought with stories of how it had released evil. But, given that the alternative is that the entire world loses hope and we all head to hell in a hand-basket, I have to agree with Artie that risking some evil in the world is better than no world at all.

For Steve, Claudia using the metronome to bring him back means that she feels what he feels. At first it seemed to be instead of him, but watching him gasp for breath as Ethan tried to absorb his pain points to her sharing his pain, not just taking it entirely.

Myka is right, though, there has to be another way, or at a minimum another artifact that could help make sure Claudia doesn’t feel his pain. Somehow, I think that way equates to disaster – using an artifact to offset an artifact leads to needing to use another artifact and another and another...

Yeah, I don’t think it’s a good idea either.

Hugo Miller, who seems to be the Gilligan of Warehouse 13, stopped by again this week. He spends more time getting into trouble than solving it. I get that he wanted his nephew to follow in his footsteps and become an Agent, but for frakk sakes, maybe lockup the artifact after you show it to him Hugo!

Does anyone else feel like the entire Astrolabe story has added a very dark element to the show? Brother Adrian is wonderfully played by Brent Spiner, as his warning to Artie as he left the café had me muttering unkind words about the character.

Finally, I do want to give a big thank you to Nick McHatton for letting me fill in for him on Warehouse 13. While I have watched every episode, I haven’t covered the show in a few years and it’s like a comfy blanket that I get to snuggle up with again.