“The creation of an artifact is simply the meeting of an object, a person and a moment.” ~ Mrs. Frederic
Last week Pete and Claudia worked with former agent Hugo Miller and his nephew to collect Bobby Fischer’s marbles and stop the headmaster of the nephew’s school from killing everyone while under the influence of one of the marbles. Meanwhile Steve and Myka headed to New Orleans to investigate miraculously cured psychiatric patients where Steve lets it slip to Myka about his connection to Claudia. And back at the warehouse Artie received another unwelcome visit from Brother Adrian who tells Artie he knows Artie was the one to use the Astrolabe and threatens to undo Artie’s life’s work as Artie had undone his.
‘No Pain, No Gain’ takes Pete and Myka to Toronto, Canada to investigate a hockey players miraculous healing while Artie and Steve track down some missing artifacts from Artie’s past and Mrs. Frederic begins to show Claudia about her destiny as the future Warehouse caretaker.
After seeing a video of a hockey player, who mysteriously heals after a serious mid-game injury and seemingly recovers with superhuman strength, Artie determines that an artifact is involved so he sends Pete and Myka to Toronto, Canada to investigate.
When Pete and Myka arrive in Toronto, they meet with the team and the player, Mike Madden, with the mysterious healing ability to begin their investigation. After meeting with the team, Pete and Myka check all of Madden’s gear and find that everything connected to Madden is clean and though he had been fine in the rink, he was in pain outside of it. At which point, Pete suggests that someone else is using the artifact on Madden.
They discuss Madden with the team owner and come to the conclusion that a fan is using the artifact on him and recruit Madden to help them determine which fan it is by setting up a raffle. As Pete hands out raffle tickets and checks bags and purses for artifacts, Myka suddenly keels over in pain, heads to the bathroom and discovers she is suddenly nearly full-term pregnant.
After calling Artie, they figure out the artifact must be a wish fulfilling artifact and Pete admits that he wished it on her while holding a set of a fan’s keys, but when they head back to the seats they find the fan left after witnessing a kiss between Madden and Myka. At the fan’s house, they discover that the artifact is a pair of dog tags left to the fan, Judy Giltoy, by her grandfather who had imbued them with wish fulfillment during the Bataan death march in WWII when trying to keep his friend going though deathly ill.
When they find out Judy has kidnapped Madden, they head out to her grandfather’s cabin to save him. Pete sees Madden lying in pain on the floor and goes outside to find Judy with an axe to Myka’s throat. Judy uses the dog tags on Pete to collapse his lungs and kill him, but when she goes to check on him he knocks her down and grabs the dog tags. Judy pulls out a knife and just as she’s about to attack, Myka shoots her with the Tesla. Pete bags the dog tags and Myka’s pregnancy disappears as well as Madden’s temporary fixes.
Meanwhile at the warehouse Artie checks on various artifacts he’s collected over his life as an agent, but lies to Steve about it. As he checks on one of the artifacts, Steve catches him and Artie confesses that the artifacts are disappearing from the warehouse. Steve suggests using one of the artifacts to find the others and Artie remembers that one of the artifacts is the McCoy rifle, which responds to the Hatfield rifle. After looking through the scope, Steve and Artie determine the artifacts are being kept in a place nearby and take the Hatfield rifle to track the McCoy rifle.
The rifle leads them to a locked garage, so Artie breaks the lock, opens the door and a cascade of bullets fly as the Hatfield and McCoy rifles engage in battle. Artie quickly shuts the door and Steve points out that he could have been shot. When Artie says Steve wouldn’t have died because he’s on the metronome, Steve blurts out that Claudia might and confesses to Artie about his connection with Claudia. Artie is relieved to find that the weird feelings Claudia had mentioned earlier were due to that and not her turning evil and determines to help Steve find a way to get off the metronome. After removing the Hatfield rifle from the area, they go into the garage and find the missing artifacts as well as a box of black diamonds, which Artie hides from Steve. Steve then notices shipping material in the corner and they realize that some artifacts may have already been shipped elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Claudia receives a lunch invitation from Mrs. Frederic. When Claudia arrives for lunch, however, Mrs. Frederic instead takes Claudia on a walk. As they walk, Mrs. Frederic asks Claudia if she senses anything. Claudia pauses for a moment and then walks over to a storefront and points out a woman inside. As they watch the woman, a man walks in and sets his baby on the counter while he inquires about his purchase. A robber suddenly runs into the store and in the chaos pulls the trigger while pointing at the baby. The woman Claudia pointed out reacts and jumps in front of the bullet saving the infant. Claudia rushes inside to check on everyone, though the woman is okay, Claudia notices her bracelet glow. When she heads back outside and talks to Mrs. Frederic she realizes that it was the birth of an artifact; when ordinary people do extraordinary things. As a final way to show Claudia the destiny that awaits her, Mrs. Frederic takes her to a nursing home where Claudia sees an old man painting. When she asks if he’s Mr. Frederic, Mrs. Frederic tells her that it is her grandson pointing to an abnormally long lifespan as the warehouse caretaker.
It goes without saying that ‘No Pain, No Gain’ was a lot of fun to watch. You can’t beat Pete and Myka as a team. There interactions are priceless. Some of the most hilarious moments stem from these two. A few of my favorite moments of the episode would have to be all of the instances of “You go, girl” as Pete supports Myka as “the sassy best friend.” And Myka’s reactions to Madden’s flirtations were amusing. Plus Pete’s desire to ride the Zamboni. Can’t really blame him much for that one! Though Myka had some fun lines, Pete still managed to get the best line of the night: “You can play Mike’s Magic Flute later.” There were a lot of great Pete and Myka moments in ‘No Pain, No Gain,’ but that one was definitely the best.
It was also interesting to know a little bit more about Mrs. Frederic and Claudia’s destiny as the future caretaker. Needless to say, it would suck to outlive everyone in your family, but the rest of that job seems pretty awesome. It was great learning about Mrs. Frederic and Claudia’s sixth sense to the birth of an artifact. Besides that abnormally long lifespan and sixth sense, I wonder what else they can do? I also wonder what it means for the fate of Mrs. Frederic if she’s showing Claudia all of this now. Is she reaching the end of that lifespan? Or maybe she was just the caretaker until another came along and now that Claudia is there, Mrs. Frederic can retire? That’s another thing: When Claudia takes over will Mrs. Frederic shrivel up and turn to dust or retire and age at a normal rate?
It was great seeing Artie and Steve work together. I love Steve’s ability to tell when someone’s lying; you’d think they’d learn by now not to lie to him anymore. Though it’s good that Steve has told Artie about his connection to Claudia, I don’t know that taking him off the metronome is the best idea. What would that do to him? What would that do to Claudia? I hope whatever they figure out, it allows Steve to stay alive.
And to add to the confusion about the Brotherhood’s ability to get stuff out of the warehouse, how did they do it without tripping the alarms and how do they know exactly which ones to take without being detected? I figure there are files and all of Artie’s finds are on computer, but how did the brotherhood find them without being detected? Another point of confusion, why exactly can’t Artie tell anyone about what he did? Obviously Brother Adrian knows Artie used the Astrolabe, so why can’t Artie tell him why he used it?
Side Note: My apologies for past articles and the spelling of Mrs. Frederic’s name. I realize now, that I had been spelling it wrong.
