io9 has a nice appreciation of Warehouse 13. I let the show slide a bit last season, but while Charlie Jane Anders praises the show for its optimism, I think last night's episode did something conceptually that I'd been waiting for since the show's pilot last year: it expanded the universe we live in.
SyFy kicked off the show with an episode that postulated a source behind Lucrezia Borgia's sexual appetite and seductive power. This year, they began by taking on H.G. Wells, and postulating that the science fiction author's inventions were real—and that said author wasn't who we thought. Instead, H.G.'s a fiercely independent babe in an steampunk time-travel vest, and unlike Lucrezia, she'll be sticking around for a while. I'd be extremely pleased if the show had her run wild through a wide swath of science fiction history.
And it's also a reminder that the show does a nice job with gender typing. Myka's a babe but a fierce rationalist, while Pete's more sentimental and intuitive. The show's most talented tech, Claudia, is a young woman, as is its most graceful hospitable character, Leena, an aura-sensitive bed and breakfast proprietor. And as Mrs. Frederic, C.C.H. Pounder is effortlessly elegant, but also the toughest person in the entire show, someone who can get up from a hospital bed to strangle someone who's been effectively zombiefied, and who can walk into an Escher-designed world completely unafraid. The show doesn't make a big point of the continuum of behavior and gender presentation embodied in its characters, which is also refreshing. These characters see more of the world in all its mystery and terror than the rest of us do. Their gender performances might as well be ahead of our time, or at least what Hollywood typically gives us, too.