Flynn
Carsen is a librarian Kramer would approve of. He does not spend a lot of time
putting newspapers on big wooden sticks for cheapskates trying to save a
quarter and probably doesn’t even know the Dewey Decimal System. Instead, he
spends his time tracking down magical items to keep them out of the hands of
potential evil-doers. The protagonist of TNT’s hit television movie franchise The Librarian is now a recurring
character in their new regular series, The
Librarians, note the plural form, which debuts with back-to-back episodes (The Librarians and the Crown of King Arthur
and The Librarians and the Sword and the
Stone) this Sunday (promo
here).
Carsen
has two last names and twenty-two college degrees. The perennial student was
chosen by “the Library,” the mystical apostolic successor to the great Library
in Alexandria, now hidden beneath the Metropolitan Public Library in New York. Having
held his own in a series of adventures, Carsen is rather put out when the
Library recruits Col. Eve Baird, a no-nonsense counter-terrorism operative to
be his Protector. However, he will reluctantly accept her help when the shadowy
Serpent Brotherhood starts assassinating all the weird genius rivals he beat
out for his current globe-trotting gig. In fact, the only former candidates
still surviving are the three oddballs who never made it in for their
interviews.
Jacob
Stone is an unassuming laborer in the Oklahoma oil fields, who writes scholarly
articles on medieval art and history under an assumed name. Ezekiel Jones is a
thrill-seeker, who likes to steal the things Stone writes about. Cassandra
Cillian has savant-like powers of memory and superhuman computation, but it
might be linked to the tumor that will eventually kill her. Together with
Carsen and Baird, they will track down several Arthurian relics the Brotherhood
needs to control the magic they intend to let loose upon the world.
The
Librarian one-offs might have been
popular, but they must have skewed toward a decidedly younger demographic.
While the premiere episodes, directed in a straight forward manner by Independence Day producer Dean Devlin,
never descend into outright slapstick, the dominant acting style practiced is
decidedly broad. This is especially so for Noah Wyle’s Carsen and hammy John
Larroquette, joining the Librarian world
as Jenkins, the curmudgeonly manager of the Library’s branch office (evidently in
Portland of all places), who is clearly being set up to serve as the Giles-Watcher
to the three new recruits. However, Rebecca Romijn demonstrates decent action
chops and an appealingly down-to-business screen presence as Baird.
The
villains are not bad either. Matt Frewer returns to chew a bit of scenery as
the Brotherhood’s immortal overlord, Dulaque and Lesley-Ann Brandt’s
unfortunately named Lamia is a promising femme fatale. It is hard to judge from
just two episodes, but John Kim and Christian Kane at least seem comfortable in
the parts of Jones and Stone. In contrast, Lindy Booth may need some time to figure
out how to breathe life into Cillian, a passive naïf character written
somewhere between a door mouse and door mat.
