Why You Should Watch The Librarian(s)

Those of you enraptured by The Pitt and its accurate portrayal of an emergency room, likely recognize the show’s protagonist Noah Wyle from his extended stint in another medical drama – ER. But he’s far from a one-trick pony as far as acting goes. Which is perfectly exemplified by his run as Flynn Carsen in the long-running The Librarians franchise.

I’ve always been vaguely aware of the series. I would catch bits of The Librarian movies on TV now and then, and I knew about the existence of a TV show that continued the series. Its premise can be essentially boiled down to Indiana Jones meets Doctor Who. And that’s quite an intriguing combination if you enjoy stories of light-hearted adventure with a fantasy bend.

Only, at first glance, those bits of the movies I saw looked just a little bit too campy and low-budget to be truly enjoyable. And the follow-up show’s premise seemed a touch too close to that of Warehouse 13, which started airing just a couple years earlier.

Fast forward to today, when television is going through a dark age of pathetic episode counts and excruciatingly long breaks between seasons. Now that streaming shows have settled into being poorly paced movies chopped up into 6-8 pieces, and network shows worth watching are few and far between, I’ve been going back to the older series I overlooked.

Usually this leads to me remembering why I’ve skipped the show in the first place. But occasionally, a real treasure reveals itself. The Librarians is one such gem.

The Librarian Movies

What we know today as The Librarians franchise started back in 2004 as The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. It was a made-for-TV movie about a brilliant 30-something underachiever Flynn Carsen who gets a chance to turn his life around when he gets a magic letter recruiting him as a Librarian. The Library here is an ancient institution dedicated to collecting magical artifacts to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

Naturally, these artifacts keep falling into the wrong hands, making the Librarian into a fast-thinking and occasionally swashbuckling adventurer who uses his wits and encyclopedic knowledge to defeat the bad guys. The Librarian is assisted by the Library’s Caretakers and his personal Guardian, usually a lady whose attractiveness is only exceeded by her combat skills.

Made on what appears to be a shoestring budget, the franchise doesn’t shy away from wearing its inspirations on its sleeve. Like how the opening sequence of the second movie appears to be a direct homage to The Last Crusade. And when we get the obligatory time-travel episode, we catch brief glimpses of not just the TARDIS but a DeLorean as well.

What’s so good about it then? A certain sense of earnestness that permeates the entire thing. It never devolves into a cheap imitation, like one of those Asylum productions. The franchise treats its adventures as the real deal. To the point where after a while, you stop paying attention to special effects that look at least a decade out of date, overly simplistic fight choreography, or the technobabble magically saving the day with alarming regularity. You simply kick back and enjoy the ride.

The talent on display is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If you’re a TV enthusiast, you’ll spend half the runtime of every installment of The Librarians pointing at the screen as you recognize this or that actor. This “Characters Welcome” approach makes the series an honorary member of USA Network’s “Blue Sky” brand of television.

The eponymous Librarian Flynn Carsen, in both the movies and the subsequent show, is portrayed by Noah Wyle. These days he’s the Hollywood it-guy headlining the medical drama The Pitt, and winning all sorts of awards. Thanks in no small part to Wyle’s portrayal of Dr. Robby, that show was recently renewed for its third season. Going back and watching him begin his Librarian journey as an overeducated but ultimately clueless nerd, and then over the course of multiple movies and television seasons transform into an Excalibur-wielding force of nature is an absolute joy.

And he’s far from the only actor of note among the cast. In the movies, his female companions are Sonya Walger, who you likely remember as Penny from Lost, Gabrielle Anwar, who loved to shoot bad guys as Fiona in Burn Notice, and Stana Katic, who gave us one of the most iconic will-they-won’t-they TV romances as Kate Beckett in Castle.

Moving beyond the main heroes, the supporting cast is also nothing to sneeze at. Inexplicably, Flynn’s mentor Judson is played by the legendary Bob Newhart. His performance, effortlessly blending deadpan delivery with an air of mysticism is alone enough to make the movies worth watching. And even the villain of the first movie is not some mook. It’s none other than Kyle MacLachlan, agent Dale Cooper himself.

So while the movies occasionally look like they were shot on the cheap as a student project, their cast consists almost entirely of TV royalty. Which becomes even more noticeable when we get to the second movie – Return to King Solomon’s Mines. This one is directed by Jonathan Frakes, Star Trek: TNG’s own Commander Riker. Frakes must’ve enjoyed the experience, as he became a regular director for the franchise and one of its key producers. Under his tutelage, the franchise became a home away from home for notable Star Trek actors, from John de Lancie to Brent Spiner.

You can clearly feel that everyone involved in the production was having a lot of fun making these movies. They ooze with neat little details that add an air of honest whimsy to the experience. Like how in the first movie Kelly Hu’s henchwoman Lana is absolutely infatuated with our hero Flynn (which is later mirrored in the first season of the show with Lesley-Ann Brandt’s Lamia). Or how in the third movie – The Curse of the Judas Chalice – Werner Richmond’s ever-helpful cabbie André keeps boasting about having cousins all over New Orleans, and then he actually does. Stuff like this helps bring the movies to life way more than cutting-edge special effects.

The Librarians Show

The three movies were released between 2004 and 2008. And in 2014, we got a TV show continuation – The Librarians. It’s essentially SG-1 to The Librarian’s Stargate. Only here, Noah Wyle continues his run as Flynn Carsen, so we avoid an O’Neil vs O’Neill situation.

The show ran for four seasons between 2014-2018, elevating the franchise to a whole new level. It very well may be one of the last great TV shows of the golden era of the early 2000s. While each season is only 10-12 episodes, they follow the best TV show formula: each individual episode is self-contained, but they’re all, either sneakily or explicitly, a part of a season-long arc. This approach leverages the serial format to create a long-form narrative, but also leaves enough room for independent adventures and character growth.

That single ‘s’ added to the title immediately tells us the key difference between the show and the movies. When the show starts, Flynn Carsen is already a legendary figure and one of the greatest Librarians to ever Librarian. Which means we’ll need a fresh crop of heroes to be amazed by all the magic and artifacts. Naturally, since they’re a team now, each of them will be special in some way.

Headlining this new team is Rebecca Romijn playing an ex-special-forces operative and the new Guardian Eve Baird. You likely remember her as Mystique from the early 2000s X-Men movies. She does a great job playing the no-nonsense ‘straight man’ and the glue who holds the new group of Librarians together.

Then we have Christian Kane as Jake Stone, hot off his Leverage run. The man is an absolute fount of charisma. His character follows a pretty unusual archetype of a redneck cowboy who’s actually a super-genius and the world’s foremost expert on fine art and architecture.

Then there’s Lindy Booth’s Cassandra Cillian, who’s been in a lot of stuff, including a recurring part in Relic Hunter, a cool little show that’s essentially Tomb Raider with serial numbers filed off. Her character can visualize math (and magic) and is essentially a living computer.

And finally, we have John Kim who you’ll likely hate the first time he steps on the screen as Ezekiel Jones. He portrays an abrasive, cocky, and self-assured master thief and hacker. But to the actor’s credit, over the course of the show, he wins you over and gets you fully on board his over-confident shtick.

With a setup like this, you’d expect the show to act as a soft reboot phasing out Flynn Carsen. In reality, he’s merely pushed out of focus, but he’s always there. Noah Wyle appears in just about half of the show’s episodes. This gives the new crew plenty of space to breathe and grow, but also preserves the series’ chronology and lore.

By the time the show kicked off, Bob Newhart who played Judson in the movies was 85 years old. A hectic schedule of TV filming was not in the cards for him. As a result, the character is said to have died prior to the show’s events. But he’s still there in spirit, quite literally, making occasional cameos when the story calls for it.

His replacement as the active Caretaker is Jenkins, portrayed by John Larroquette. While his biggest role prior to The Librarians was that of Dan Fielding in close to 200 episodes of Night Court, if you’ve seen enough TV, you know his face. He’s had small or recurring parts in countless shows and movies. He brings all this experience to The Librarians as he portrays an immortal knight, currently more interested in keeping things orderly, drinking tea, and experimenting with magical artifacts. He had huge shoes to fill, but he did succeed in becoming the new Judson.

In a true Librarian fashion, this core cast is augmented by countless impressive cameos, like Bruce Campbell playing Santa Claus (alongside comedian Jim Jefferies playing a mall Santa). We’re also treated to some surprisingly impressive performances, like David S. Lee’s portrayal of Moriarty.

The show’s episodic nature also allowed for some very fun ‘concept’ episodes, like one where the characters are stuck in a time loop running on video game logic, one where the heroes transform into famous fairy-tale characters, or one where a group of aging D&D nerds have to step up and assist our heroes in saving the day.

Sadly, the show ended up suffering from the shifting TV landscape and network realignment. The overall series had been on a consistent upwards trajectory since the first movie, where each subsequent installment was better than the last. This reached the absolute peak during the show’s second season.

And then the TNT network decided to shake up its programming and go into a darker and more serialized direction. This resulted in John Rogers stepping down as the showrunner and Dean Devlin taking over. And that caused the show’s quality to plummet like few others. Which is honestly surprising considering Dean Devlin was involved with the series’ production since the very first movie.

Even so, the third season of The Librarians feels like it belongs in a different show. Several different shows, really. A major addition to the season is a government agency that appears out of nowhere and becomes the Library’s rival in the artifact-collecting business. This goes against the series’ established lore where the Library operated above the government, and serves no practical purpose. Beyond that, there’s an undercurrent of overly exaggerated drama that clashes with the show’s established whimsical tone, and an exhausting overreliance on fake-out betrayals.

There are also tons of sloppy events and subplots. Like how one of the Librarians develops super-strength with no set-up or explanation. Instead of a major plot point, it’s barely discussed or even utilized. Later in the season, that same character is shown to be learning martial arts from the Monkey King, who appears out of nowhere and is contained within a single episode. The two occurrences don’t seem to be connected in any way. This was a perfect opportunity to set up a season-long training arc for the character where he gradually uncovers and learns his new abilities. Instead we get these disconnected events that merely make us scratch our heads.

In a similar vein, another character develops mind control powers. Which she uses a whole of three times during the rest of the show. This isn’t explored in any way. No one questions these abilities. Their appearance is not explained or developed any further. This same character also gets an incredibly awkward scene where she, with no build-up or pre-existing romantic tension, professes her love for Jenkins. He, thankfully, shoots her down. And afterwards, this romantic angle is never mentioned again.

What’s even worse is that during the previous season the character was set up to have an arc involving the Ladies of the Lake and deeper exploration of the universe’s magic. That would’ve actually fit the story and the show’s lore with its robust Arthurian elements. But that angle is abandoned entirely.

After the travesty that is season three, the show’s fourth and final season attempts to right the course. As a result, we do get a few standout episodes. But by then, the damage has been done, the mess left behind by the previous season is too big, and at times it feels like the people involved in the production would rather be doing something else. Even the season’s finale is for some reason a concept episode doing a take on Orwell’s 1984 of all things. And then in the last five minutes, it remembers that it’s actually both a season and a show finale, and frantically rushes to wrap up the season’s arc and give our heroes at least some form of send-off.

But while the show’s later half is bound to leave an unpleasant aftertaste, the fun movies and the absolute joy that are the first two seasons make the series more than worthy of your attention.

As of this writing, there’s actually a new continuation of the show airing in The Librarians: The Next Chapter. These days I’m very apprehensive of reboots, remakes, and other modern takes on old franchises, so I’ve not yet seen any of it. But at the very least, the franchise still has life in it. And that’s mighty impressive for a series that began as a TV movie with a shoestring budget.