The Librarians and the Tears of a Clown – Director: Jonathan Frakes/Writers: Steve Kriozere, Mark A. Altman
This one starts in Green Town, Kansas in 1996 with a couple of teenagers (Kirby Goulding and Charlotte Holloway) at a carnival. Charlotte says she loves the magic of the carnival and wishes it would never end, but it’s pretty obvious Kirby is more into her than anything else. He wins her a flower at a game, but she’s too busy talking to some magician dude to notice, so Kirby walks away. Flash forward to the present and
another carnival, this time in Oaks Park, Iowa. We see a woman being loaded into an ambulance as the carnival owner, the Amazing Mysterium (played by Sean Astin) looks on. The guy who owns the land they’re on shows up to give him shit and Mysterium (who I’m assuming is a grown-up Kirby Goulding) uses some kind of magic to make the guy start juggling really fast and droning on about how this is the greatest carnival on Earth.
Later we see Jenkins at the carnival, looking for Eve and the Librarians. He 
got a weird video from Eve, who was being menaced by clowns, warning him to stay away. The clowns do look pretty freaky, but then all clowns kinda do, don’t they? Before they can do anything to Jenkins, he latches on to a kid who’s hanging out at the carnival, pretending to be the kid’s uncle. Since the kid seems to know his way around, Jenkins asks about his friends but still can’t find them. He does notice how all the carnies seem hypnotized except Mysterium, who he sees looking at some photos from the booth. He drops one and when Jenkins
retrieves it he finds photos of Ezekiel looking kinda freaky. The kid hotwires the photo booth to print out the last few photos taken and everyone looks weird in them. After telling the kid to leave, Jenkins follows a trail to the sideshow tent and sneaks in. He finds the others, who have been turned into sideshow freaks: Eve is a two-headed woman, Jacob’s the strongman, Ezekiel’s a snake charmer, and Cassandra’s a mermaid.
All they can say is how this is the greatest carnival on Earth, so Jenkins whips up some impromptu smelling salts and brings them out of it. He 
takes them to the Back Door, chased by angry clowns and they just make it through. Once back in the Library, their transformations reverse instantly. Mysterium isn’t happy his freaks have escaped but he’s distracted when Charlotte (played by nerd favourite Felicia Day) shows up with a Golden Ticket. Apparently, he’s been sending Golden Tickets to various Charlottes as the carnival moves from town to town, hoping to find the right one and now he finally has. Charlotte doesn’t recognize Kirby and just wants the cash prize, but “Mysterium” talks her into staying to check out the carnival, including his amazing magic act. In the Annex, Jenkins cures the others’ amnesia with a noxious potion and
they remember going to the carnival to investigate the woman we saw in the beginning. She turned out to be a lawyer from San Francisco named—you guessed it—Charlotte Holloway, who was exhausted from juggling too much … literally. They went to check out the carnival and while Eve and Cassandra were talking to Mysterium (and getting magically charmed by him), Jacob and Ezekiel found out where the freaky clowns were coming from: Mysterium was transforming nosy people into clowns. Jacob and Ezekiel were captured by clowns and turned into sideshow freaks.
They wonder what artifact Mysterium could be using, since it would have to be pretty powerful. After determining that he is Kirby Goulding, Jenkins 
says all the artifacts that could give him that kind of power are locked up in the Library. Ezekiel suggests that it could be a newly-created artifact (since magic now back in the world), which means the artifact could be almost anything. Jenkins tells them to look for something that has a lot of personal meaning to Kirby. Since they can’t go in as themselves, Cassandra comes up with a clever idea: dress as clowns. Yeah, the others aren’t too enthusiastic, but they don’t have much choice. Jacob and Ezekiel check Kirby’s trailer for the artifact but have to hide when some clowns come in. One of the clowns finds the magic detector
Ezekiel left on the table. Eve and Cassandra can’t snap any of the enchanted people back to normal, so they figure they’d better find the artifact soon. While watching Kirby and Charlotte, Eve realizes he’s in love with her, a fact that’s confirmed when Jacob and Ezekiel find all the invitations to various Charlotte Holloways in Kirby’s trailer. But Kirby is starting to get a bit pushy, which kinda freaks Charlotte out. When she tries to leave, Kirby won’t let her … which really freaks her out.
The Librarians overhear Kirby talking about an “ascension”, which they 
figure means he’s going to send the carnival into a higher dimension, trapping everyone there forever. Kirby is so busy trying to impress Charlotte that he doesn’t even notice she’s scared shitless, but his need for her approval gives the Librarians time to make a plan. Jacob and Ezekiel replace a couple of clowns and join Kirby’s weird tableau (where he’s now having the hypnotized performers beat the shit out of each other), while Eve tries to get close enough to grab Kirby’s wand and Cassandra sneaks down to untie Charlotte. Things don’t
quite work out and they’re all captured, although Charlotte is freed. Ezekiel grabs the wand but that isn’t the source of Kirby’s power. He freezes them all and takes them to the house of Horrors, where he plans to turn them into wax statues. They realize he’s recreated a carnival from his youth to impress Charlotte, but she still doesn’t recognize him.
Jacob figures out that Kirby’s flower is the artifact, the same flower he won for Charlotte years ago. That jogs her memory and she confronts Kirby, 
telling him she wasn’t flirting with the magician back then, she was just getting them tickets to his show. She plays up to him to get him to hand over the flower, which takes away his power. Ezekiel pretends to throw the flower into the molten wax and Kirby jumps in after it. That makes the carnival vanish and brings all the hypnotized people back to normal. Later, DOSA comes to check things out and finds the photos Kirby took of the Librarians. They take the flower back to the Library and house it in a new wing dedicated to modern artifacts.
This is a pretty good episode, showing that magic can lead to the creation of
new artifacts and highlighting the dark side of love and obsession. Charlotte says Kirby was a sweet kid, but Eve points out that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially when you add magic to the mix. It’s funny to think that the whole thing was set off by Kirby misunderstanding Charlotte’s interaction with the magician, but he must’ve had some darkness in him to go that crazy.
Favourite Quotes:
- “I’m a precocious scamp.” The kid letting Jenkins know why he’s so bold.
- “Is anyone else seeing colours that don’t exist in real life?” Cassandra when Jenkins uses his memory-restoring potion.
- “Don’t be wrong.” Jacob’s reply to Kirby when he tells Jacob not to correct him.