Pop-Ed: The Librarians – Should You Watch?

The Librarians Plot Summary:

Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle), his guardian (Rebecca Romijn), and his gang of librarians-in-training travel the world to prevent the magic that is left in the world from falling into the wrong hands.

The Librarians, a continuation of TNT’s television movie series The Librarian, is a fun show to watch. Last week, the network aired the first two episodes in the series, “And the Crown of King Arthur” and “And the Sword in the Stone.” Even though both episodes combined clocking in at an hour and a half, the show never felt like the writers were dragging the plot out.

“And the Crown of King Arthur” had parts that felt slow because its mostly exposition, but boy was that exposition fun to watch. In the episode, the Serpent Brotherhood is out to kill everyone who is qualified to be a Librarian. By the time Flynn (Wyle) and his guardian, Eve Baird (Romijn), figure out what is going on, there are only three qualified people left: Cassandra Cillian (Lindy Booth), Ezekiel Jones (John Kim), and Jacob Stone (Christian Kane). Cassandra is a mathematician who suffers from auditory and sensory hallucinations when she retrieves memories. This is represented by math equations on the screen as she thinks — clearly taken from Sherlock, but it works. The next potential librarian found is Jacob Stone, who is a genius cowboy and an expert in art history and architecture. He’s found in a dive bar, which becomes home to a bar fight when he flirts with the female leader of the Serpent Brotherhood and her gang of ninjas who are trying to to kill him. The last person found is Ezekiel Jones, who is an expert thief. Eve helps him escape from a failed attempt to steal an artifact from a museum. Rescuing the male librarians was just the beginning of perfectly choreographed fight scenes, which sometimes featured magic swords, in a fairly intelligent show.

Aside from the Serpent Brotherhood hellbent on killing The Librarians, and restoring magic to the world, the other recurring theme is Flynn needs protection and help, knowing it, but yet trying to push away everyone who wants to be in his life. Part of this is because the library chooses guardians and librarians, so Flynn doesn’t really get a say in his life. Although, he chooses to keep Judson (Bob Newhart), who is the previous Librarian, around to give him advice. This leads to the inevitable sexual chemistry between Flynn and Eve, which doesn’t come to a head until the end of “And the Sword and the Stone” when Flynn decides that Cassandra, Ezekiel, and Jacob need her to protect them more than he desires to travel the world with her. While it wasn’t unexpected, hopefully, the show won’t abandon its mission to focus on their relationship.

The Librarians will probably have many interesting stories told well. However, it is worrisome that each episode is only 45 minutes, since the first two episodes flowed flawlessly from one episode to the other. If you don’t look for the opening credits, there is no way to tell where one episodes ends and the other begins. In order to reach its potential, The Librarians may need to return to its origins as a series of TV movies or follow the British model of having sort seasons with longer episodes.

Rating: 9 out of 10

The Librarians airs every Sunday night on TNT.

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Allison Lips is the Founder of Wait! What’s a Dial?, a television blog that showcases the writing of millennials. Allison graduated from Rowan University in May 2013. She has a passion for TV history, especially late night and game shows. If she could go back in time, Steve Allen would still be hosting The Tonight Show. Follow her on Twitter @waitwaitsadial.

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