The Librarians: And Santa's Midnight Run

December 22, 2014 5:26 PM - Season 1, Episode 4

When the Serpent Brotherhood wants to kill Santa, the librarians must rescue him and help him accomplish the secret purpose of Christmas.
posted by oh yeah! (7 comments total)

Thank goodness for Bruce Campbell, one of the most reliably entertaining guest stars a show can have. This was the first episode so far where I felt like everyone was making the same show, that it was silly and cheesy on purpose rather than by accident.

The music was still intrusive, and the giving-hope-to-the-world montage had me cringing a bit at the white savior aspect of the protest segment. But overall, a successfully cute episode I think.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:49 PM on December 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ezekiel (not sure if that's his name....the thief) as Santa was a crack up.

I liked it as well. This is actually the first one I've seen besides the pilot. The show is over the top cornball, as it should be. The background music did a much better job of staying in the background.

Seeing Bruce Campbell made me miss Burn Notice.
posted by the webmistress at 10:47 PM on December 22, 2014

Bruce Campbell is indeed delightful.

Speaking of Burn Notice, I thought that it was one of the few shows that ended well and never really suffered through any abysmal seasons. Also, one of the few shows that actually showed the superhero main character go through the tedium of remaining in shape.
posted by porpoise at 3:11 PM on December 28, 2014

I completely loved Campbell's appearance. We must bide our time while they produce the Evil Dead sequel to Army of Darkness television series....so we take our Bruce when we can get him. There was something delightfully silly about him continually referring to himself in the third person and I would have loved to have seen Campbell be allowed to go a bit more mischievous as Nicholas.

The hat on Ezekiel was a nice touch, particularly when he was leading the kids in Christmas carols and singing about gay apparels, "Kill me now!"

The show is definitely coming more together. Kane remains my biased favorite, "Architecture is just art we live in...why is that so hard for people to grasp?"

The ending with Beaird definitely had a very Dr. Who magical ending feel to it. And yet, it's okay because unlike Dr. Who, this show is all about the magic, as weird and crazy as it is. "There's really a Mrs. Claus?!" "Santa knows my name?!"

For a second, I thought my Christmas was going to be ruined by some more terrible kendo (I don't think I can honestly call it Kendo, so much waving a katana around), but thankfully, that was nipped in the bud. Phew!

By the way, am I crazy or did they imply that the Snakehood leader may have been a former Librarian or at worse, a former care taker like Jenkins?

(I actually am looking forward to the next episode, woot!)
posted by Atreides at 9:00 AM on December 30, 2014

This is easily the cheesiest show on television. I hope they find a way to tweak the recipe so that it's good cheese, like Wisconsin sharp cheddar curds, say. A lot of the time right now, it's Velveeta. Sometimes, it's even spray cheese.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:07 AM on December 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

By the way, am I crazy or did they imply that the Snakehood leader may have been a former Librarian or at worse, a former care taker like Jenkins?

Atreides - on the episode #104 Answer post on Kung Fu Monkey (John Rogers' blog) his response to the question "Methinks that Du Lac worked for the Library at some point in time.....and knew Jenkins fairly well...." was "Wrong, then right."
posted by oh yeah! at 12:10 PM on December 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Pretty funny that they ended up having the Christmas episode only a few episodes in. I like what John Rogers said about it: "Christmas episodes are useful in a meta-sense because, regardless of our heritage, the holiday brings a lot of emotional baggage. Even the acceptance or rejection of mainstream culture's traditions around the date say something about you, never mind the complications of interacting with your family. It's my personal favorite kind of plot hook -- a story object you toss into the middle of the show, and each character will naturally have a different, and revelatory relationship with it."

Bruce is never not fun to watch, and their concept of Santa (and how he annoyed Eve) was fun.

Nice that Eve got a birthday-not-Xmas party, as per the wish of all December birthday folks that I hear about. Also interesting: "As often happens in TV, her name being "Eve" was a coincidence which led to a solve in an episode which then became one of the primary building blocks of the season arc. "

Oh yeah, flying out of a plane won't kill that guy at all.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:47 AM on January 6, 2019