Snag, Bag and Tag.

... continues the task for the paranormal relic keepers at Warehouse 13.

The second season opener on SyFy channel involves a change-of-the-guard for villainy, as the power-hungry MacPherson is thwarted, but not before releasing H.G. Wells from her bronze prison at the warehouse ... and no, that wasn't a typo, H.G. Wells is actually a woman in this story. I won't get into the hows and whys of it all, as perhaps some of you haven't seen this new series from SyFy. But, it looks like H.G. Wells will be this season's nemesis for the crew at Warehouse 13.

For the basics of this series, and it's kooky characters ... read on ...

Pretend you are watching The X-Files (which I suppose, some of you reading this but not be old enough to remember ... if so, my apologies for the assumption), and Mulder was the goofy, intuitive one, and Scully was serious and straight-laced ... oh wait, that is how they were. Oh well, it's easy to fall into similar comparisons between The X-Files and Warehouse 13, but don't fall into that trap. Warehouse 13 is fun and cheesy and hip, with just enough drama to make you care about the characters.

Warehouse 13 is a mysterious storage facility in South Dakota, which houses thousands of various paranormal artifacts collected, and protected, across the ages. It is the latest incarnation of secret warehouses to store and protect these historically significant items ... or rather, protect humanity from their strange powers. All of the previous warehouses fell under some flaming disaster, going all the way back to the first Warehouse: the Library of Alexander. Not all of the objects are necessarily evil, as some are quite handy to have around when you are chasing after a renegade artifact, or person possessing one.

Others, however, can be quite malicious, as with the Aztec Bloodstone ... a stone that can control the mind of humans to do it's bidding ... which happens to be a craving for the blood of virgin sacrifices! It is this such object that brings our unsuspecting cast together, in the series opener. Secret Service Agents Pete Lattimer and Myka Bering are assigned to watch over security for a museum exhibit opening, with which the President is attending. After their bizarre encounter with the mysterious Aztec artifact, they are each reassigned by the mysterious Mrs. Frederick to Warehouse 13. Here the constantly bickering duo are met by the warehouse's appointed caretaker, Dr. Arthur Nielson. Artie is just as mysterious as Mrs. Frederic, but his devotion to the warehouse and it's objects are only matched by his love for baked goods. Speaking of baked goods, we next meet Leena, who runs the local bed-and-breakfast, which becomes the warehouse recruits new home.

Rounding out the group, later in the first season of the series, is young Claudia Donovan. Claudia hacked into Warehouse 13, and forced Artie to help bring back her long-believed dead brother, Joshua. Joshua fell victim to a teleportation experiment, while Claudia was a student of Artie's 12 years ago. In the aftermath of recovering Joshua, Claudia is pseudo-recruited into the Warehouse 13 crew, as the resident Mz. smarty-pants geek.

• Agent Pete Lattimer, Secret Service - Eddie McClintock (Better Off Ted, Moonlight, Glory Days)
• Agent Myka Bering, Secret Service - Joanne Kelly (Jack Hunter and the Lost Treasure of Ugarit, Supernatural, The Dresden Files, Vanished, Solar Attack, Jeremiah, Mutant X, Tracker tv series, Mentors, and the upcoming horror flick - Last Stop)
• Dr. Arthur Nielsen, former Secret Service agent - Saul Rubinek (Masters of Horror, Eureka, Santa's Slay, LOST, Stargate SG-1,  A Nero Wolfe Mystery, The Family Man, Mentors, The New Outer Limits, The Android Affair, Matrix, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Ray Bradbury Theater)
• Claudia Donovan, Artie's former student - Allison Scagliotti (yes, the infamous MnM from the scifi web series - Gemini Division, Smallville, and be sure to be on the lookout for cross-over episodes with SyFy Channel's Eureka)
• Leena, Bed-and-Breakfast Owner - Genelle Williams (The Incredible Hulk, Banshee)
• Mrs. Irene Frederick, Director of {CLASSIFIED} - CCH Pounder (Avatar, W.I.T.C.H., Justive League, End of Days, Millennium tv series, House pf Frankenstein, Face/Off, White Dwarf, Tales of the Crypt: Demon Knight, The X-Files, Lifepod, Psycho iV: The Beginning, Quantum Leap)
• Agent Daniel Dickenson, Pete and Myka's former boss - Simon Reynolds (Saw IV, Dark Water, Earth: Final Conflict, The 5th Quadrant, Forever Knight, Beyond Reality, Gate 2: The Trespassers, Friday the 13th tv series, The Guardian)
• Joshua Donovan, Claudia's older brother - Tyler Hynes (The Last Sign, Tales from the Neverending Story, The Other Me, Peter Benchley's Amazon, Are You Afraid of the Dark?)
• James MacPherson, Artie's former partner-turned-villain - Roger Rees (The Invasion, Veritas: The Quest, The Scorpion King, Return to Never Land, William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, M.A.N.T.I.S., The Tower, Tales of the Unexpected)
• H.G. Wells - Jaime Murray (Valentine, Eli Stone, Dexter, Demons, Keen Eddie, ... and look for her in upcoming films: Devil's Playground, The Rapture, and Samuel Bleak)

Yes, this SyFy series is an "Artifact-of-the-Week" cliché of a television show. But, the show has a lot more humor than drama, mixing just enough history, literature, mythology, science fiction and the paranormal to make it entertaining for all ages. And with the ratings of the 2nd Season premiere, it looks like Warehouse 13 will be around long before it becomes a Warehouse 14 somewhere else in the world.

Warehouse 13 airs Tuesdays on SyFy. For more info on the show, check out the official SyFy website:

http://www.syfy.com/warehouse13/