The third season of The Librarians television series begins on TNT on Sunday, November 20th. “But wait,” you say, “I want to check out season three, but I haven’t got my Library card yet. What episodes should I watch to bring myself up to speed?”
The good news is that the basic premise of the series is easy to catch onto. There’s this mystical Library that’s been around for ages, storing ancient magical knowledge and relics, and a crack team of expert Librarians (and their appointed Guardian) who strive to protect the world from whatever supernatural menaces aren’t securely shelved in the Library yet. That’s all you really need to know, but if you want a crash course in Library studies, these five episodes can serve as your card catalog.
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
This is where it all began. Before the current television series, there were three TV movies starring Noah Wylie as Flynn Carsen, the Librarian. This, the first movie, introduces Flynn as well as the Library itself and sets the stage for everything to come. There’s also plenty of globe-trotting adventure, humor, and a touch of romance. Two sequels followed, and they’re a lot of fun, with pirates and vampires and King Solomon’s Mines, but let’s skip ahead to…
“The Librarians and the Crown of King Arthur”/“And the Sword in the Stone”
This two-parter originally aired as a special movie-length series premiere so I’m going to cheat and count it as one episode. Picking up several years after the original movie trilogy, the first episode of the TV series has the Library recruiting three new Librarians—science whiz Cassandra Cillian (played by Lindy Booth), art history expert Jacob Stone (Christian Kane), and master thief/lovable scoundrel Ezekiel Jones (John Kim)—along with a kick-ass new Guardian, Colonel Eve Baird (Rebecca Romijn), a former UN counter-terrorism operative. Along the way, the Librarians shift their base of operations from New York City (as in the movies) to Portland, Oregon, where they meet Jenkins, the Library’s somewhat acerbic new Caretaker (John Larroquette, picking up from the movies’ much gentler Bob Newhart). Flynn is still around, by the way, and remains a recurring character on the TV series, dashing in and out of the plot as required, while trying to get used to the fact that that he’s no longer the only Librarian.
“And the Drowned Book”
The season two premiere reunites the Librarians, after they kind of went their separate ways at the end of Season One, and introduces the intriguing concept of Fictionals: classic literary characters who manage to escape their own stories to exist in the real world. Combining forces for the first time in months, the Librarians run afoul of both Prospero (from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, of course) and Professor Moriarty (please tell me I don’t need to cite his origins), setting up an arc that spans the rest of the season, while the Librarians deal with various standalone “case-of-the-week” type missions as well. And speaking of which…
“And the Cost of Education”
“And the Cost of Education” is mostly a standalone in which the Librarians have to deal with a Lovecraftian tentacle monster who is wreaking havoc on the very college campus that supposedly inspired HPL’s infamous Miskatonic University, but it makes the list because (1) it’s one of my very favorite episodes and (2) amidst all the interdimensional hijinks, which include a lovable pet gargoyle named Stumpy who won a special place in the hearts of all Librarians fans, seeds are planted for future episodes, such as the first appearance of the enigmatic Ladies of the Lake (yes, plural), who will be showing their watery faces again. This episode also raises the troubling question of whether the Library’s age-old policy of locking magic away from the world, and covering up its existence whenever possible, is still working in the 21st century, which remains unresolved even after the college is saved from unspeakable eldritch horror. (Stick around for the poignant final exchange between Cassandra and Jenkins.)
“And the Final Curtain”
Finally, prepare yourself for the new season by watching last season’s finale, which wraps up the Prospero arc in an ingenious fashion, adds time-travel to The Librarians’ bag of tricks, and leaves our intrepid bibliophiles (including Flynn) poised to cope with whatever season three throws at them. And did I mention that William Shakespeare himself shows up, and is nearly assassinated by a time-traveling Moriarty? Or that Flynn helps himself to a rat-on-a-stick?
Postscript: By necessity, this list leans heavily toward premieres, finales, and the more arc-centric episodes, but many of my favorite episodes, with the best bits and character moments, involve standalone cases of the week. They may not advance any arcs or contain any stunning new revelations, but they’re fun and thoroughly entertaining in their own right. So, with that in mind, let me give a shout-out to such classic Librarians eps as “And Santa’s Midnight Run” (Bruce Campbell as Santa Claus, need I say more?), “And the Infernal Contract” (John DeLancie as the Devil, ditto) and “And the Fables of Doom” (fairy tales gone wild). That last one, by the way, was the primary inspiration for my second Librarians novel, The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase, coming out next out year.
There are plenty of other stories waiting in the Library’s crowded stacks, of course, but these should get you started—and you don’t even need to worry about overdue fines.
Greg Cox is the author of The Librarians and the Lost Lamp, a copy of which is actually shelved in the Library. Really.
I love Robin McKinley books. My favorite is the Blue Sword. I can’t remember if I’ve read the Outlaws of Sherwood or it could just be I don’t own this version. I’ll have to track it down. Given my name I’ve read or watch a lot of Robin Hood over the years. Robin McKinley does write great believable characters.
Aerin is the King’s only child but because of her questionable mother she is not his heir, her cousin is. She spends most of her childhood humiliated by her lack of magic and hiding from everybody. But after making one of those huge mistakes mentioned she adopts her father’s injured warhorse and is inspired with the ambition to become a dragon slayer – which is nowhere near as cool in Damar as it sounds. She starts using the main palace halls rather than creeping down back stairs to avoid meeting anybody, and going into town to buy things she needs for her experiments. And the people seeing her are reminded that her mother was a healer as well as a witch and the girl seems perfectly normal and charmingly unspoiled and she begins entirely unknowingly to gather supporters among the populace. Of course it all goes pear shaped but the real point is she starts taking control of her life and it improves.
A truism in writing any fiction but high fantasy is that the more bonkers it gets, the more grounded in the real world the story has to be. A reader will buy a demon in the pantry if that pantry is stocked with Pop Tarts and peanuts, and the main character has the munchies in the middle of the night. Real details makes the unreal more really and connects the reader to the character’s experience because they’ve gone looking for snacks in the dark.
The works of Tolkien are HIGH fantasy which has little to do with the real world. The authors you mention write LOW fantasy where the real world is the setting of the fantasy happenings. Do a search on Wikipedia which has a brief comparison of the two.
My favourite of all Robin McKinley’s novels is Sunshine.
I really do pretty much love all of them – she is so good at taking a Story you think you know and exerting a twist that turns it around and makes it come out the other side of the mirror.
My younger sister was given Outlaws of Sherwood when she was ten or so. She was tolerably familiar with the Robin of Sherwood legend because I was a huge Robin Hood fan – I’d read tons of retellings ancient and modern. But when she had finished reading Outlaws, she asked me “So is that how it really was? This is the real story?”
Like an asshole (well, like a very-well-read teenager talking down to my little sister, but I still feel bad about it) I told her no, no one knows the real story. But when I re-read Outlaws now, I think: lots of writers tried to find the core myth and write the real story of Robin of Sherwood, but my sister was right: this one feels real.
I’d say contrast is something Tolkien was exceptionally good at. He managed to have archetypes like Gandalf and real, believable people like Sam Gamgee in the same story and make it work.
I didn’t find McKinley’s Robin Hood characters believable. They felt too contemporary for my taste. Much was practically a 20th century leftist student.
Eowyn wouldn’t have a problem dealing with sword and reins because she’s a shield maiden and has been trained to fight on horseback. So, come to think of it was Harry, but they didn’t have time to cover that.
On the other hand Eowyn has bigger problems; her uncle and foster father is failing fast and under the thumb of a creepy adviser who’s stalking her. Her brother and cousin are galloping around trying to keep the country together while Eowyn herself is trapped at home, waiting on her Uncle and dodging Wormtongue who’s gaslighting her like mad. Then her cousin is killed, her brother is banished and she’s all alone…
6: We are trying to discuss McKinley, surely, not Tolkien?
5. I liked Much. He reminded me of another favourite Robin Hood retelling, Geoffrey Trease’s Bows Against the Barons.
3. The lack of realism is my problem in many (most) fantasy novels set in Scotland*, which McKinley has to her credit never attempted – I think Outlaws is her only novel pretty definitely neither set in some format of North America nor in Fairyland/the border countries. Her Sherwood is a real forest, one you could really get lost in.
(*Scots will understand me: if you’re going to have werewolves in Glasgow, that’s fine, but you need to know whether they support Celtic or Rangers.)
Running through them:
Books set in the border countries of Fairyland (or in Fairyland itself – yes, I’m drawing from the Tolkien essay “On Fairy Stories”)
Beauty / Rose Daughter, Deerskin, Spindle’s End, Chalice, Pegasus, and the Damar novels, are all set in border countries on Fairyland. While McKinley makes you think initially that the Homeland described in the beginning of The Blue Sword is England and Outland is India, it becomes clear as we discover we’re back in the country of The Hero and the Sword that this is not anywhere near our world.
Sunshine, Dragonhaven, and Shadows, are all set in some iteration of USian North America.
And Outlaws of Sherwood is set in England, the only one.
To me, the pegasus are definitely magical creatures – but the dragons of Dragonhaven are biologically-real.
@7, True. I guess my point was that Eowyn has some very realistic issues in her high fantasy setting.
Harry and Aerin are both misfits. Harry doesn’t fit into her quasi-Victorian Homeland and Aerin can’t seem to fit into Damar despite being the king’s daughter.
Robin McKinley has also written some short fiction that shouldn’t be ignored when discussing her work. Most of the stories are fairy tales retold really well but some are altogether original. The best ones are in the shared anthologies Fire and Water (shared with her husband Peter Dickinson). I love “Water Horse,” which has a high fantasy setting,but “A Pool in the desert” is actually a Damar story set (mostly) in modern England. (You have to read it and you will understand what I mean.) “Hellhound” is a lovely sort of ghost story, also in a modern setting. I can take or leave most of the stories by Peter Dickinson but “Phoenix” is rather interesting. And a bit bizarre. (The cover of Water, along with a few inked interior illustrations, is by Trina Schart Hyman, my favorite illustrator.)
If Robin ever writes one or more sequels to Pegasus, I will be really grateful and might forgive her for the cliffhanger.
P.S. I love the Greta Helsing books, too! Can’t wait for the next one.