Don't Hate the Player

"Don't Hate the Player"
Warehouse 13 episode
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 6
Directed by	Chris Fisher
Written by	Ian Stokes
Original air date	15 August 2011
Guest stars
Aaron Ashmore (Steve Jinks) Neil Grayson (Douglas Fargo) Ashley Williams (Sally Stukowski) Sasha Roiz (Marcus Diamond) Steven Yeun (Gibson) Mark O'Brien (Jerry)

"Don't Hate the Player" is Season 3, Episode 6, of the SyFy television series Warehouse 13. The original airdate was 15 August 2011.^[1]

Plot

Claudia and Pete are collecting coffee preparing for a night of inventory, with Pete telling Claudia she should play her guitar at this venue sometime, when her phone rings. The call is from frantic man who tells her that Douglas Fargo gave him her number in case "anything went wrong with the beta test". Claudia, Pete and Myka rush to Palo Alto, California, to find Doug and another man, Jerry, plugged into a machine, where they are shaking vigorously with a very high heartrate. Gibson, the person who called Claudia, explains that it is a virtual reality game that has gone wrong and they are now stuck in the game. It turns out that they have also been using an artifact to help make the game work, Beatrix Potter's tea set.

Claudia and Pete enter the game as characters, an elf and a gladiator, respectively, to rescue the two players. They discover that the game is a medieval version of Warehouse 13, complete with a ryhming Artie who sends them on their quest to "rescue the princess". Along the way, they find a Leena character. They rescue Fargo from quicksand only to be confronted by an axe-wielding monster, who traps them in the game by taking their game controllers. They decide the only way to escape the game is to finish it, so they set out to rescue the princess. It turns out the princess is a silly fake version of Claudia, to only her surprise. The game does not finish and they discover Jerry, just as he is whisked off by the monster.

Back in reality, Myka has discovered that the tea set creates the things they are the most afraid of into the game. The monster is actually Jerry's ex-girlfriend, Hannah, whom he was too scared to propose to. Claudia's fear manifests itself. Suddenly she in a mental institution where a doctor tells her she imagined the Warehouse and everyone in it. He tries to give her electroshock therapy, but is stopped by Myka as she enters the game. Claudia breaks free and turns the electro-shock apparatus back on the doctor, eliminating him from the game. Myka and Claudia realise that the players can destroy only their own fear, so they track down the real Hannah and put her in the game so Jerry can propose to the monster Hannah, ending the game.

In the 'B' Plot Artie and Steve Jinks investigate a mysterious suicide at the request of FBI agent Sally Stukowski. It turns out that a new painting in the gallery is a lost Van Gogh, which Artie thinks is an artifact, as "death follows it". Artie doesn't want to involve Stukowski with a potential artifact, so pretends that he thinks it was suicide too. Later that night Jinks and Artie break in to the gallery disabling the security systems, only to find Stukowski waiting for them. They then replace the Van Gogh with one that they have copied, using an artifact. They discover that the painting is activated by a puff of air, after Stukowski sneezes on it and she and Jinks are thrown across the room by a violent wind, before Artie neutralises it. At this point the device used to disable the alarm get damaged and fails, setting the alarms off. Stukowski escapes with the original Van Gogh before the doors shut, leaving Artie and Jinks to be arrested by the police.

Later after their arrest she releases Artie and Jinks from the police and returns the painting back to them. After she lied to the police Jinks remarks that she is "good at it". Once they have left Stukowski receives a nod of acknowledgement from a mysterious stranger (Sasha Roiz) and later she is seen reporting to an unseen man in a wheelchair. Later back at the Warehouse, small fly-like robots are seen emerging from the painting and flying off for an unknown reason. The episode finishes with Claudia playing the guitar in the club, with a slow motion montage of the rest of the characters on screen.

Cultural References

• Pete refers to the virtual reality machine as "the Matrix."
• "I saw it on Mythbusters", Artie's reasoning for his suicide theory. The Mythbusters proved that it was possible for someone to leap through a pane of safety glass in the segment called "Leaping Lawyer" from the second episode of the pilot for the show
• "Playing "Frogger" since before you were a tadpole" - Pete
• The character of Artie in the game repeating itself until the correct words were said is reminiscent of many video games.
• "Crash Bandicoot out" - Pete ending call from Myka
• Claudia and Pete follow a 'Yellow Brick Road' through the game, Pete calls Claudia Toto and says "let's go find the Scarecrow" all referencing The Wizard of Oz
• Artie's "Eclipse" that he uses to deactivate the laser detectors works for 42min 59sec, which he explains is the length of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon"
• Several "first-person-shooter POV" shots, similar to many games, as are the sound effects whenever an item is taken out by one of the characters
• Pete: "And what's the deal with Puff the Magic Dragon out there?"
• Pete references Reading Rainbow when talking about Peter Rabbit
• The music from whenever Captain Kirk fights someone is played whilst Pete fights the monster/Hannah
• Fargo cries "You shall not pass!" quoting Gandalf in the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• Claudia plays "Where is My Mind? by The Pixies

Artifacts

• Beatrix Potter's tea set - drinking the tea from this set stimulates the percuneous section of the brain, causing the drinker to live his worst fears.
• Vincent Van Gogh's missing painting A Stormy Night - when a gust of wind (such as Sally Stukowski sneezing) touches the canvas, the depicted storm comes to life and blows gale-force winds from the painting.
• Studio 54 Disco Ball (unused as artifact) - used to chain "Leena of the Eagle People" to the ground. Not its primary function.
• "Memory Paper" from Johannes Gutenberg's printing press - Artie uses a sheet of this paper to create a replica of the Stormy Night painting. Per Artie, the replication properties of the paper are so precise that "not even Van Gogh himself would know the difference."
• Steampunk Password Cracker - Frequently used piece of Artie's travel bag; in this episode, Artie uses it to disable the security gate in the art gallery.
• Eclipse - disables security and alarm systems for forty-two minutes and fifty-nine seconds, the length of time in which a portion of the moon is darkened rotating away from the sun (it's also the length of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon).
• Nanotechnology insects - tiny robots which Sally Stukowski planted in the canvas of the Stormy Night painting before returning it to Artie and Steve. Once the painting was hanged in the Warehouse, the insects broke out of the painting and infiltrated the Warehouse computer system.

Music

Where is My Mind? covered by Allison Scagliotti
Gerald Fried's 'Kirk's fight music' from Amok Time

Other

• Artie has a spray can version of the purple goo neutraliser
• Jinks, while being a human lie machine, cannot seem to lie himself or omit the truth very well. Also didn't appear to detect Stukowski's lies.
• Two references are made to characters from Eureka; Leena's imprisonment is referred to as Carter's curse, and the Dagger of Josephine, which Fargo failed to program into the Fortress 13 game, is named after Jo Lupo.

Critical reaction

The episode received mostly positive reviews, from critics and viewers alike. ScienceFiction.com praised it highly, summing up by saying, "It’s really no wonder at all why this is SyFy’s Golden Child Scripted show!"^[2] robwillreview.com went as far as to comment, "In a season that has been full of fantastic episodes...the most purely delightful instalment of the series we’ve had".^[3] Io9 praised all of the many geekie references in it and loved the video game idea. They described it as "enough nerd candy to give you geek diabetes. In a good way."^[4] The first person shooters view were praised by most reviewers as "a brilliant move".^[5] The only negative review to be found came from IGN, which wrote, "It tries, and fails, to be a fun video game homage." Other negative aspects was the affect used inside the video game, which was called "distracting".

However, all reviewers were in agreement that Allison Scagliotti "practically steals the episode". Her character performances, from the Ditsy Princess to the Screaming, Terrified Mental Patient, were highly praised. Most labelled her as the episode's stand-out performer. Even the highly critical IGN reviewer admitted that her guitar performance was "actually quite respectable".^[6] Over-all, most viewers commented that it was an excellent episode, with Scagliotti standing out.

References

1. ^ http://warehouse13.wikia.com/wiki/Don't_Hate_The_Player
2. ^ http://sciencefiction.com/2011/08/16/warehouse-13-dont-hate-the-player-recap/
3. ^ http://www.robwillreview.com/?p=8543
4. ^ http://io9.com/5831194/warehouse-13-proves-that-nerd-candy-can-be-incredibly-nourishing
5. ^ http://www.tvfanatic.com/2011/08/warehouse-13-review-dont-hate-the-player/
6. ^ http://uk.tv.ign.com/articles/118/1188050p1.html

External Links

• Don't Hate the Player at the Internet Movie Database