TV Show Review: The Librarians - Season 3

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Mixes comedy and fantasy with ease

Cons: Effects could be better at times

The Bottom Line:

God resurrected

Causing Chaos on the Earth

More fantasy fun

“I Hate Prophecy More Than I Hate Time Travel.”

I’ve gotten so I watch mostly shows on the traditional five networks.  Honestly, that’s gotten to be more than I can handle.  (I need to cut back somewhere.)  One of the rare shows I enjoy on the non-traditional networks is The Librarians, and the show is just as much fun in the third season.

Now if you are thinking this show is about books and people who take care of them, you’d be completely wrong.  In this case, the library is really a place for collecting artifacts – magical artifacts.  That means our librarians, Ezekiel Jones (John Harlan Kim), Cassandra Cillian (Lindy Booth), and Jake Stone (Christian Kane), are collecting these objects before they fall into the wrong hands.  You can see how this would cause some excitement in their lives.  Helping them out is their guardian Eve Baird (Rebecca Romijn).  As far as the library itself goes, there’s Jenkins (John Larroquette), who has curated the collection for a long, long time.

This season finds the librarians fighting chaos.  Okay, so that’s pretty standard, but in this case, Chaos is a person, an ancient Egyptian god, in fact.  And he’s determined to regain his power and take over the world.  The librarians have a way of stopping them, but it will require a sacrifice.  What will that sacrifice entail?

The show is actually a spinoff of a series of made for TV movies that starred Noah Wiley.  He continues to serve as an executive producer and returning to play Flynn Carsen.  He’s not in every episode, but he appears in more of them here than in the first two seasons.  Also reprising a role from the movies this season is Jane Curtin as Charlene, another of the librarian’s curators.

Of course, the fight against Chaos doesn’t occupy the entire season.  Along the way, we get Baird trying to stop a prophecy of her own death, a spontaneous combustion death at a wellness resort, and a spooky carnival.

What is hard to capture is the exact feel of this show.  It’s quite obviously a fantasy.  But unlike many shows on today that seem to want to take things super seriously, this show is part comedy.  It creates some pretty wacky situations for the characters and milks them for laughs.  That light-hearted feeling translates to a lot of fun for us.

Yet the show takes itself seriously enough.  When things do get serious, and they do, it plays those moments perfectly, too.  There is a fine balance, and the show makes it look very easy.

Of course, the cast deserve their fair share of the credit for that.  No matter which notes they are expected to play they hit it out of the park.  There is not a moment you can point to as a problem.

The biggest weakness the show has is special effects.  I’m sure it’s no surprise to learn the show has quite a few of them, and most of them work, but it is easy at times to tell that this is a lower budget show.  Still, this is worth noting only in passing.  I’m always having so much fun, I don’t really mind.

The other issue this season is a personal pet peeve.  I am not a fan of the device where a show starts out in an interesting situation and then flashes back to show us how the characters got there.  This season, the writers employed it for a long string of episodes in the middle of the season.  Not a deal breaker for sure, but definitely annoying.

There were 10 episodes in this season, so there are 10 episodes in this set.  In addition, we get commentaries and vlogs on all 10 episodes.

If you are looking for a show that is just plain fun and isn’t trying to be anything else, you’ll want to check out The Librarians.  Season 3 continues that fine tradition of being completely entertaining.

Season 3 Episodes:

1. And the Rise of Chaos

2. And the Fangs of Death

3. And the Reunion of Evil

4. And the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

5. And the Tears of a Clown

6. And the Trial of the Triangle

7. And the Curse of Cindy

8. And the Eternal Question

9. And the Fatal Separation

10. And the Wrath of Chaos