WAREHOUSE 13 Recap: Age Before Beauty

“Age Before Beauty” felt a little darker to me than the other episodes this season, particularly with respect to how the changed ages resulted in death for the victims. Yikes.

This week’s case finds Pete and Myka in a little Miss Congeniality-type situation. The fashion world is losing some of its most beautiful models – to old age. Immediate and indescribable old age. Years are being literally stolen from the women, and it’s up to the team to go undercover to figure out what is happening.

The perfect way to do so? Vamp up the va-va-voom with Myka in a little red dress, and ¡andele!, we’ve got ourselves a model! All she has to do is look great and boss Pete around.

Sounds good to me.

Oh except for the part when Myka turned into an octogenarian. Um, creepy!

The team discovered that a 1930’s photographer, Man Ray, had a camera with artifact properties but it was never found. They find the photographer (who’d winked at Myka at the catwalk) and realize that the camera doesn’t just steal youthfulness, it also transfers it to another person. Or as Artie put it, ‘peddling a second chance at life’. It was a little unclear to me how exactly taking a picture of the photographer restored Myka’s youth, but we’ll just go with the writers on that one.

“I’m always amazed at the correlation between being beautiful and being a complete bitch.” Oh Myka! I suppose someone who took Russian lessons and fencing while other girls played with Barbies might think this.   I appreciated the underlying theme about Myka’s insecurities when standing among these other beautiful women. Her embedded bitterness toward vapid models (and being called fat) rang true, though I think we can agree that she looked fantastic. I wanted to keep seeing her in AMAZING clothing. Fashion show! Fashion show! Fashion show at lunch! [Kelly Kapoor]

Pete was very sweet to Myka. I loved how he couldn’t look her in the face to compliment her, but also couldn’t look at the back of her head. I expected him to toss in some crude joke or immature comment at the end for a laugh, but he didn’t. Our cookie-loving agent is growing up!

Some of us have remained off of the Pete/Myka ship and appreciated more of their growing friendship and respect, but I kind of thought Pete’s words were very romantic. Even MORE romantic was the way he went after Damian when he thought he’d harmed Myka. We’ll see if they continue to explore Pete & Myka in a ‘more than partners’ kind of way. Your thoughts? Friends or more than…

Speaking relationships, Claudia & Todd are giving the old dating thing a try, and while it was certainly cringe-worthy (Clauds ordering the chili with EXTRA onions and then causing it to be spilled all over Todd’s lap), there was still a cute kind of vibe about how awkward they BOTH were around one another. Artie’s advice for her to be herself was good advice, though Claudia was right when it was a little unrealistic to totally be herself, on account of the no-past and super secret job thing. I also liked that he set up a little blind date for Todd and Claudia at the end of the episode.

On a technical note, there seemed to be something a little different about the lighting, framework shots and other camera work with this episode, and I really liked it. It felt very fresh and also grounded. I think it correlates with the fact that there wasn’t a ton of ‘sciency’ stuff in this episode either. It was more about getting into the motivations of the models and seeing what happened, not about there being a reactive artifact and then having to piece together evidence to snag, bag and tag it.

All in all, another successful episode of Warehouse 13. The show is continuing to produce quality storylines and character development.

Thoughts from you? Did you like the episode? And wait, did we know that Myka had a sister named Tracy? Did I miss this before?

Be sure to comment below and tune in next week for the crossover episode with EUREKA!