The Librarians Reviews: Season 1, Episode 7

The Librarians and the Rule of Three – Director: Marc Roskin/Writers: Paul Guyot, Kate Rorick

This one starts with a high school student (Jonah Gordon) getting ready for a science fair. Jonah is the sort of student who takes his academic career very seriously, but his preparations are interrupted when he’s suddenly paralyzed.

At the Annex, Jenkins, Eve, Cassandra, and Jacob are enjoying their day off (by doing research) when they’re interrupted by Ezekiel, who used his day off to rob a museum. Lucky for him, the Clippings Book starts going nuts, directing them to a huge magical threat at the Chicagoland STEM Fair. Of course, Cassandra is stoked to be going to an upmarket Science Fair. Cassandra was the kid who won all the Science Fair trophies when she was in school, so she’s in her element. The others are less enthused … especially Eve. They listen to a speech from Lucinda McCabe, the head of the organization sponsoring the Fair. When they introduce themselves as Librarians, Lucinda thinks they’re the judges for the Fair. They split up to look around and meet various students, including Amy Myer (whose mother seems more into the whole thing than she is). Eve is impressed by Leonard Cole, a kid doing the old classic Baking Soda Volcano. Leonard figures he doesn’t belong there, but Eve gives him a speech about underdogs that seems to motivate him (although her looks might have a lot to do with it).

Cassandra and Ezekiel notice something strange, but things really get wild when Leonard’s baking soda volcano starts spewing real lava. Lucinda explains it away as Leonard going too crazy with the chemical mixture, but Leonard has no idea what happened. He says he wasn’t even supposed to be there but five other students (including Jonah Gordon) had weird accidents so he got bumped up to take their place. Jenkins shows up to let them know something is warping the physical laws in the auditorium. He figures a coven is behind it and tells them to look out for three people, since the Rule of Three is very powerful in magic. Cassandra remembers three goth kids who were staring at Amy and acting suspicious, so she tells Eve and Jacob to look for them, while she and Ezekiel try to find Amy. The goths are on the upper level, lighting candles and preparing for some kind of ceremony. Eve and Jacob interrupt them, but it turns out it was just a romantic thing that the guy (Dashiell) was using to get Amy to go out with him again. Amy says she has to focus on schoolwork and doesn’t have time for dating.

While looking for Amy, Cassandra and Ezekiel run into a kid (Tim) who releases a swarm of flies from his mouth that fills up the auditorium. Lucinda passes that off as a swarm of insects under the floor that were attracted by the chemicals. Cassandra figures whoever’s using the magic is trying to make the other students lose. Jenkins points out what a bad idea that would be because the Rule of Three multiplies the magical backlash threefold back on the caster. Jenkins gives them a device to track the magic, but they’re not sure where to start since everyone could be a suspect. Jacob talks to Dashiell, reasoning that he wouldn’t be involved since he doesn’t give a crap about science. Jacob connects with him by talking about how everyone pretends to be something they’re not and Dashiell gives him the dirt on Amy and all her smart “friends”, who apparently hate her because she’s too smart. They figure Amy’s the target and Ezekiel tracks some magical emanations to Amy’s phone. They find a magical app (disguised as a brain-testing game) on the phone that grants wishes.

They realize the magical code is too advanced for a student to have created and according to Amy’s phone, she’s never actually used the app anyway. Cassandra asks Amy about the app and she says her mom gave it to her after finding it on some website for “proactive parents”. Even though it seemed to be working for everyone else, Amy never used it because her wishes weren’t about being smarter, they were about her intelligence not being the only thing that defines her … a sentiment Cassandra understands sine her parents pushed her to academic greatness too. Unfortunately, their idea of her ended up being more important to them than she was, which obviously soured things for her. She gets the website name and they find that 27 people are using the app … in other words, the Rule of Three to the third power, which is going to cause one hell of a magical backlash. While looking for the trophies to hand out, Lucinda accidentally goes through the Back Door and ends up in the Annex, much to Jenkins’s dismay. He calls Eve, who soon realizes their visitor isn’t who she appears to be. In fact, she Morgan Le Fay and Jenkins seems to know her (and hate her with a passion).

Naturally, Morgan is the one behind the app (hoping to collect all the magic let loose during the backlash), but Eve quickly realizes that stopping her won’t be easy when Morgan effortlessly stops bullets in mid-air. Eve lets the others know about Morgan, but Cassandra says evacuating the gym won’t work since the 27 app users are already magically linked. She figures they can create a Faraday Cage to protect the students from the magical explosion by using the legs from Amy’s table (which are covered in runes and were provided by “Lucinda McCabe”). Amy helps Cassandra while Jacob figures out where to put the components to form a perfect pentagram and Ezekiel steals a phone from another student using the app (whose project is on sea Otters, the world’s greatest monsters). Eve uses the app to give her an advantage against Morgan, but she has to let her go to help save the students. Amy gets everyone inside the pentagram by claiming she’s built a Tesla coil that will kill them all if they aren’t inside it. Amy and the team activate the Faraday Cage and it works to dissipate the magical backlash. Eve is drawn into a black and white netherworld by Morgan, who tells Eve she wanted the power so she could hide somewhere. Morgan claims something big is going to happen that might doom the world and mentions the Loom of Fate, giving Eve a message for Jenkins: noli temere malum sed time heroa. (Don’t fear the villain, fear the hero.) Jenkins gives Eve shit for not killing Morgan when she had the chance, but Eve suspects there’s something big behind Jenkins’s hatred of Morgan. In case you’re wondering, the Librarians pick Leonard’s volcano as the Science Fair winner, although Ezekiel steals the trophy to give to Cassandra for saving everyone.

This is a good episode that gives us some insight into Cassandra. Her childhood must have been kinda sad (even before the tumour) since her parents were apparently focused more on who they wanted her to be instead of who she really was (or who she wanted to be). She says they threw all her trophies away when she was diagnosed with her tumour because the trophies reminded them too much of who she used to be. It was sweet of Ezekiel to give her the stolen trophy so she could start a new collection. It was cool to see Morgan Le Fay show up and I’m wondering what her cryptic message is supposed to mean. There’s obviously a connection between her and Jenkins (who she refers to as Galeas) and he certainly seems to hate her, but unfortunately she never appears again. (I have seen this season before, so I know who Jenkins turns out to be, but when I watched the first time I had no idea).

Favourite Quotes:

• “It’s a brain jar … what else would one put in it?” Jenkins explaining why he has a brain in a jar.
• “Finally!” Eve upon seeing Leonard’s volcano, a project she can understand.
• “Allegedly.” Ezekiel qualifying his statement that he’s hacked into the NSA computers.