Knock, Knock, Agents.

At long last, Claudia has joined the Warehouse!

To listen to this weeks episode, click here or click play on the embedded player below.

Let’s kick things off! We started out this week with shout outs to our Patreon supporters. You could get a shout out too, if you support us on Patreon. Check out our Patreon here. (How many times can I type out Patreon before you click on our Patreon link? …Patreon)

P.S. We’re considering adding sending you actual fudge as a reward tier! Let us know in the comments if you’d be interested in that!

We also talk about seeing young Artie. Miranda questioned the darkness and bushiness of Saul’s eyebrows in the flashback scenes and thought they were, perhaps, a bit overdone. Turns out nothing could be further from the truth!

Check out those brows on young Saul Rubinek!!!!

I haven’t read any fanfic about the moment of glorious off-screen storytelling that was The Monkey Mission, so I can’t recommend any. But if anybody knows any good fanfic on the subject matter, I’m happy to update this post so I can link to it. Because, honestly, it’s one of the funniest moments of the show so far.

Anyway, on to the truly important stuff:

CLAUDIA IS HERE!

Who’s there? Claudia. Claudia who? CLAUDIA DONOVAN!!!!!

For those tracking our color theory of orange vs. purple, we did mention that there was a subversion in that, for the first time, something that seemed dangerous (Claudia’s handcuffs) glowed purple instead of orange, and it made us question whether or not Claudia was a “bad guy.” Spoiler: She’s not a bad guy.

Here’s a screengrab of that moment.

Time to make good on your promise, Artie.

Miranda (and Eddie McClintock) gave us an amazing Actor’s Spotlight on Allison Scagliotti. She mentioned that she first saw Scagliotti as the character of Mindy Crenshaw on the Nickelodeon series, Drake & Josh. (For listeners and readers in countries outside of the United States, we discussed the enduring influence of Nickelodeon on mine and Miranda’s childhoods in the show notes for 103 “Magnetism”).

Here’s a younger Scagliotti as Mindy:

Miranda mentioned getting the proper pronunciation of Scagliotti’s name from Episode 21 of the podcast Let’s Talk About Me, Baby. That’s also where she learned that one of Scagliotti’s many artistic endeavors was time in the band Nice Enough People. She noted that Scagliotti had a starring role in the show, Stitchers and also that her work as guest starring roles in various TV shows goes under appreciated. We talked about the show Person of Interest in the show notes for our Surprise Interview with Eddie McClintock. Remember? That guy who is such a deep, intensely dark character that he even makes the lighting dark? You know, this guy:

Scagliotti guest stars on the 20th Episode of Season 2 of the show, titled “In Extremis” and does a really remarkable job. Here’s a screengrab of her in that role.

In the episode, Miranda and I also talk about how we were the exact same age as Allison Scagliotti when the episode aired. Here’s a pick of Miranda and I at that age making goofy faces for reasons neither of us remembers.

We don’t know why we’re making these faces. We just don’t know.

Moving on a bit, we talked about how cool the durational spectrometer was!!!!! For more information on real life spectrometers and what they’re used for, click here.

In that same scene, we learn that Pete’s sister is deaf, and that’s why Pete knows how to read lips. If you’re looking to learn how to lip read, here’s a website devoted to it.

We also talked a lot about the discussion of mental health in this episode. Miranda mentioned that young women in the Victorian era were often institutionalized for things that were incredibly absurd. She shared this list of actual reasons that women were institutionalized in the 19th century on Twitter.

Tag yourself; I’m “novel reading,” “over action of the mind,” and “bad habits & political excitement.”

Miranda got this list from here.

We’ve also mentioned in these show notes, several times, the Audible original podcast Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets. The podcast continues to be relevant to our own, as Episode 9 of the podcast focuses on the history of Victorian asylums.

We also wanted to be sure to mention that while we don’t know the statistics of how many people are voluntarily vs. involuntarily committed to mental hospitals, we do know that voluntarily committing yourself is a massive sign of personal strength and nothing to be ashamed of. Content warning for suicidal ideation, but here is a powerful first person account of a person who chose to check themselves into a psychiatric hospital that is well worth the read. Around the same time, we also discussed the well-documented fact that people who live with mental illness are much more likely to be the victims of crime than they are to commit crimes.

Miranda also talked about how Claudia’s bloody nose is similar to the one Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer used to get from using too much magic.

She also theorized that this occurs in science fiction when a character becomes physically involved with a force beyond their control.

I literally could not resist using this gif. I was completely incapable of resisting.

Our awesome guest, Dr. Kathleen Crowther—who is also a fan of Warehouse 13, gave us some amazing information on Rheticus. She mentioned that he wrote poetry and had read one of his about the Beer of Breslau. You can find that poem and its translation here. She also said that his poetry could get quite racy and was based on or inspired by Ovid’s Art of Love. She also mentioned that Rheticus was a student of Nicolaus Copernicus and that they both believed in a heliocentric rather than geocentric model of the solar system. Revolutionary stuff! Get it? REVOLUTION-ary!?!?!?

viva la revolucion (around the sun)… oh well, at least I think I’m funny.

Anyway, here’s some more information about Rheticus.

Miranda also gave a shout out to the person in charge of hair and makeup for this episode. That person is actually two people. Susan Exton-Stranks was in charge of hair and Marie Nardella was in charge of makeup. They both did an excellent job!

We also talked about how powerful it was that Drew Z. Greenberg—the focus of our Writer’s Appreciation Corner for the week—worked a beautiful story of same-sex love into the story which featured a real queer man from history (Rheticus) at a time when gay marriage wasn’t even legal in the United States yet! He talked a bit about his commitment to queer representation here.

Dr. Crowther also mentioned that the picture used to signify Rheticus in the episode was actually a picture of his contemporary Philip Melanchthon., who was one of Rheticus’ mentors and teachers at the University of Wittenberg. Also, related to his representation of a queer man of history, Crowther told us that one of his friends and, likely, lovers was Heinrich Zell, a German (Prussian?) painter and cartographer.

Then we talked about the heartbreaking scene where Claudia talks about her brother staying up to read her Maria Looney on the Red Planet. This is especially sweet, not just for the reasons we talked about in the podcast, but also because further research on the subject revealed that the Maria Looney book series was a spinoff of the Matthew Looney series which focused on Maria’s brother. So the strong brother-sister connection was present down to the subtext and research. It’s just so sweet.

We also talked about how we finally got to see Artie’s nice car, which friend of the show, @ElZilcho on Twitter pointed out was “Jaguar XK150” and adds that “The XK150 ran for four years, 1957-61” and was an interesting and offbeat choice. El Zilcho also was kind enough to include that they got this information (and the picture we shared below of Artie’s car) from the Internet Movie Cars Database, which is a wonderful database that I would never have even known exists otherwise! Thanks, El Zilcho!

We also mentioned that giving Artie a nice red car was an excellent nod to Giles doing the same thing for himself in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Artie’s Car:

Giles’ car was a similar red car. It is a Red 1987 BMW 325i Convertible that Buffy affectionately calls a “little two-door tramp.”

Picture of Giles’ car for comparison:

We talked about seeing Mrs. Frederic WALK THROUGH AN ACTUAL DOOR THIS EPISODE!

Alas, alack! I was unable to find a gif of this historic moment. She probably ordered Claudia to delete all evidence of this from the internet.

We talked a bit about the show framing Ben Franklin’s lightning rod as an artifact. Learn more about Franklin’s lighting rod here.

We also talked about how Mrs. Frederic uses the word “glean,” which Pete finds weird. I, personally, didn’t find the word that strange. But what do you think? Try incorporating it into your vocabulary. Here’s the definition of “glean” from Merriam-Webster.

Have you gleaned what needed to be gleaned from this definition?

We also talked a little bit about how sweet and vulnerable Artie was with Claudia. He immediately goes into Dad-mode and lets his guard down with her. It’s the first time we truly see Artie showing how much he cares about other people.

This is such an adorable, moving moment!

Later in the episode, Miranda changed my life by helping me realize that Rheticus’ compass is A PORTKEY!

That’s all I have for this week.

Hope you gleaned what needed to be gleaned from these show notes, Agents!

Show Notes 104 "Claudia"