The series begins with two agents dispatched on a supersecret mission: to hunt down errant objects and store them safely on a dusty Warehouse 13 shelf. In a page from the “X Files’’ casting handbook, we get a male-female pairing, intuitive versus science-driven, both highly attractive. The believer is Pete Lattimer, (Eddie McClintock) a sarcastic bad boy known for breaking rules and going with his dependable gut. The skeptic is Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly), a rising star known for her swift kicks and attention to detail.
Their chemistry is decent, and their crime-fighting skills complement each other nicely enough. In tonight’s episode, Bering notices, to useful effect, that a suspect has alphabetized the books on his shelf, while Lattimer gets a weird feeling that the guy might have immolated himself at a gas station.
But the real stars of “Warehouse 13,’’ as far as imagination goes, are the warehouse and its quirky curator, Artie Nielsen (Saul Rubinek), who travels through vast rows of shelves on a speedy zipline and uses an old-fashioned typewriter keyboard to plunk on his modern computer. When the agents are in the field, he communicates with them through a clunky-looking videophone, James Bond by way of period-era Sherlock Holmes.
This show is a production designer’s dream, and as such, it can be playful fun; the best moments are delivered with winks and a hint of “Ghostbusters’’ glee. A football, hurled in the air outside the warehouse, takes an unusually long time to come back down. The agents neutralize the objects’ evil powers with a tub of purple goo. The fabulous CCH Pounder, fresh from her no-nonsense turn on “The Shield,’’ appears as the mysterious Mrs. Frederic, a powerful federal official who oversees the warehouse and doesn’t seem to age.
