The Librarians and Santa’s Midnight Run – Director: Jonathan Frakes/Writers: Paul Guyot, John Rogers
This one starts at a soup kitchen in England just before Christmas. A guy comes in to rob the place, but the guy ladling out the soup (played by Bruce Campbell) talks him down, appealing to his better nature almost as if he can read the guy’s mind. (Considering the episode title, I think we can guess who he is.) Unfortunately, Santa gets hit by a mistletoe dart fired by a mysterious woman and passes out.
In the Library Annex, the Librarians are decorating the place and Cassandra is very much in the Christmas spirit, although Eve seems to hate the very
idea of Christmas. Jacob and Ezekiel have their own rather specific wishes for Christmas (getting in a bar brawl and finding out what it’s like to be a good guy, respectively), but they’re interrupted by Jenkins who tells them Santa Claus has disappeared. He explains that Santa is basically an avatar of goodwill, travelling around and absorbing good feelings from people all year before letting them out on Christmas Eve to recharge the world’s karmic batteries 
for another year. But without him to do that this year, the world will turn into a cesspool of violence within a couple of months. Cassandra and Jacob go to London and learn Santa was grabbed by a woman with snake tattoos … Lamia of the Serpent Brotherhood. Ezekiel finds surveillance footage of Dulaque, someone Jenkins seems to recognize. Jenkins figures Dulaque will kill Santa as soon as possible.
In London, Dulaque tells Lamia they’ll kill Santa just before midnight to harvest all the magical energy he’s gathered. Santa tries to appeal to
Lamia’s good side (which he claims she has), but Dulaque knocks him out before he can get too deep inside her head. At the Annex, the team uses Cassandra’s memories of her trip to London with the Serpent Brotherhood to figure out where their headquarters are. As soon as Jacob and Eve show up there, they’re confronted by Dulaque and Lamia, but Jacob starts tossing priceless works of art around to keep them too busy to attack. Meanwhile, Cassandra and Ezekiel slide down the chimney and rescue Santa. Dulaque realizes Jacob 
and Eve are a distraction but it’s too late … Santa is already gone. Dulaque isn’t too bothered, since Santa is still feeling the effects of the mistletoe-holly shot Dulaque used on him earlier. Eve puts Santa’s hat on Ezekiel so he can serve as a decoy while she gets the real Santa to his sleigh. Unfortunately, the sleigh is gone and Santa not having his hat causes him to act a little weird as the poison takes effect.
Jenkins tells Eve that without his hat, the poison is making Santa shift through various incarnations of the Santa legend, including Nicholas the Wondermaker. Meanwhile, Ezekiel is positively full of Christmas spirit,
which he hates. Eve and Santa take off in a truck and Eve tells Santa she doesn’t buy into the whole Christmas spirit thing. Santa uses his power to energize the truck so they can zoom to the North Pole (where he has to be to release the goodwill over humanity), but they run out of gas in the truck and end up in British Columbia. At the Annex, Cassandra figures they can use the Aurora Borealis to help spread Santa’s goodwill energy and plots out the closest place to him and Eve. They have to get to Alaska to take advantage of the Aurora, so Jenkins finds a small airport not too far away from Eve and Santa and 
arranges for them all to meet there. Eve and Santa continue their argument, with Eve reminding him that people do terrible things to each other, even on Christmas. Santa agrees but says although you can’t change human actions, you can change the human heart. At the airport, the hat makes Ezekiel let the pilot go to be with his fiancée, while at a nearby bar Santa changes again, this time into a beer-swilling incarnation of Odin. Naturally, a brawl breaks out, which makes Jacob very happy.
At the airport, Eve’s not happy about the pilot being gone, but Santa says he can fly large objects through the air. He’s getting a bit overwhelmed by all the energy he’s carrying and almost passes out, sending the plane into a
dive. Eve engages the auto-pilot, but finds Dulaque and Lamia have landed Santa’s sleigh in the cargo bay. Dulaque tells Lamia to disable the plane’s hydraulics and prepares to kill Santa. Eve tricks him into putting on Santa’s hat, which makes him susceptible to their suggestions that he dismiss Lamia. He orders her to take off but breaks the hat’s spell and tries to kill Santa. Eve knocks Dulaque towards the cargo hatch and ends up holding onto him, but he lets go and plummets out of the plane. Even with his hat, Santa’s still out of it so Eve and Jacob land the 
plane near a pumping station along the pipeline. Santa’s too weak to spread the goodwill energy, so he gives it to Eve (since she was born at the last stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve) and she splinters into countless parts, spreading goodwill—which Santa says is really just hope—to people all over the world. Eve succeeds and they head back to the Annex, where Jenkins tells them Dulaque probably isn’t dead. They celebrate Christmas and Eve’s birthday together and realize that they all got their Christmas wishes.
This is a pretty good episode, although it’s obviously meant to appeal to our sentimental sides, like most Christmas-themed shows. Bruce Campbell was great as Santa and it was cool to see everyone get their wishes: Cassandra
found out Santa was real, Jacob got his bar brawl, Ezekiel got to be good for a while, and Eve finally got a sense of belonging somewhere after being accepted by the Annex, as well as her new friends. Since she was the most cynical about Christmas it figures she ended up being the one to restore hope around the world (and we get various scenes of that, with her giving hope to an EMT, a firefighter, an alcoholic, a suicide, a guy in a hospital, and some Middle Eastern protesters). I’m not sure why Santa didn’t get his hat back from Ezekiel 
right away at the airport; maybe he planned to give Eve the energy all along to restore her faith, although he did say it could kill her. I’m sure Dulaque will be back and he apparently has some connection to Jenkins, who refers to Dulaque as “we” instead of “he” while talking to Eve at the end. Are they twins, or two sides of the same personality? (I actually do remember who Jenkins turns out to be, but I can’t recall exactly how he’s connected to Dulaque.)
Favourite Quotes:
- “Tattoos …they were playing kazoos!” Cassandra thinking she’s figured out Cockney rhyming slang.
- “Somebody jacked Santa’s ride.” Santa noticing his sleigh is missing.
- “Well, that was new.” Dulaque after landing Santa’s sleigh in the plane’s cargo bay.