Breakdown - Recap

Pete and Myka are at Leena's bed & breakfast finishing their reports. Artie stops by to pick them up and turn them over to the courier. When Myka wonders where they're going, Artie explains that someone above Mrs. Frederic will be reading them. As he leaves, he wishes them a good time on their day off and tells them that Claudia is doing chores at the warehouse.

At the warehouse, Claudia finishes repairing the self intelligent auto-vacuum and cools off her pop with a snow globe artifact. She then goes to work lubricating the zip line but the vacuum cleaner hits the switch, sending the harness and Claudia out into the warehouse. It hits the eject switch and the line detaches, sending Claudia swinging across the crates. Among the artifacts she knocks loose are a can of silly string and a dodgeball. The silly string can rolls through a grate and lands in the gears responsible for delivering neutralizing fluid throughout the warehouse.



Pete and Myka go to the warehouse to find Claudia and notice the alarms coming up. There are artifact disturbance reports throughout the warehouse and they go to investigate.

Artie drives into the nearby town and hands over his report to the courier, who quickly drives away. However, Mrs. Frederic's bodyguard mysteriously appears on the street and tells Artie she wants to meet him at a nearby diner.

The neutralization system starts to shut down as Pete and Myka look for Claudia. Instead they find the dodgeball, and discover that every time they look away, it hits them and multiples. Then when they look away, all the multiples hit them and multiply again. They grab a hose from a nearby neutralizer station but discover the system is jammed up. Pete finally figures out how to stop them: he has Myka look away and then catches the initial dodgeball. He's buried beneath a wave of dodgeballs but manages to grab the original and the others are sucked back into it.



Artie finds Mrs. Frederic ordering a steak and pie at the diner. She starts asking him about the team's recent missions, even though she already has his previous reports.

As the energy discharges in the warehouse grow larger, Pete and Myka finally spot a Claudia-shaped hole in a house that is an exact duplicate of the B&B. They go inside and let the door shut... just as Claudia comes downstairs and tells them not to let the door shut. When Pete tries to go out, he discovers that every door he goes through just leads back into the house and there's no escape.

Mrs. Frederick continues to interrogate Artie. After a couple of patrons leave, the owner closes the diner and Artie realizes that all of the remaining customers are the Regents, Mrs. Frederic's mysterious superiors. The spokesman, Valda, explains that they're just normal people, not rulers or politicians, and takes up the interrogation of past cases. However, Artie soon realizes something else is going on and Mrs. Frederic tells him that it's Artie himself that is under investigation.



Pete, Myka, and Claudia figure out that the house they're in is the original B&B, and some artifact inside of it couldn't be removed so the entire house was transported to the warehouse. Leena's B&B was then built to replace the original. Realizing the original must have some artifact in it that the new version doesn't, they search and find a painting fused to the wall. It shows the living room of the house, and they work out that if anything changes in the room, it changes in the picture as well. Pete reverses the procedure and draws a door in the wall. However, it also leads back into the house. Pete throws his marker at the painting in disgust and they notice that the walls of the house reverberate the same way the painting does. They rip a hole in the painting and a hole opens in the wall, leading back to the warehouse. However, when they get outside they discover that the electrical discharges have created a vast storm inside of the warehouse.



Thanks to Claudia's foresight, the trio is able to access Artie's office from an emergency access terminal she set up. They discover that the neutralizer processing center is malfunctioning and they have 30 minutes before the warehouse blows up. The only way to get to the processing center in time is through the center of the warehouse... and the Dark Vault, containing the most dangerous artifacts. Claudia insists on going despite the danger and Myka backs her.

At the diner, Valda continues the interrogation and notes that Artie lets his personal issues get in the way of enforcing warehouse policy. He also accuses Artie of bringing in Daniel Dickinson, endangering the shroud of secrecy around Warehouse 13. Artie continues to defend himself but Valda warns that Artie's future is at stake.

The trio gets to the Dark Vault and Claudia defeats the Omega level security lock. Inside, purple containment fields hold the most dangerous artifacts, which are sensory-activated. They get to the other side as the back-up generators go off-line and the containment fields drop. As Claudia tries to get the opposite door open, Pete notices a doll that comes to life on him. He backs up into a circle on the floor drawn around a stand with a typewriter on it. Pete stares at it... and keeps staring at it. Myka realizes something is wrong just as they get out and the door closes behind them. When Claudia is unable to open the lock, Myka kicks it, short circuiting the mechanism. Inside they discover that the typewriter belongs to Sylvia Plath, and drains the will to live from anyone who gets to close. Pete is too depressed and despondent to leave the circle on his own and Myka can't reach in without being affected. Myka sends Claudia on ahead to the processing center, insisting she trusts her, while she tries to free Pete.



Artie has enough of questions and tells the Regents that the focus needs to be on MacPherson, who is a danger to them all. Valda points out that Artie is becoming just as bad as MacPherson, breaking the rules, but Artie insists that MacPherson knows the rules and the only way to beat him is to break some rules of their own. Artie finally realizes that the Regents are afraid of MacPherson. He tells them to either get rid of him or get out of his way and storms outside. Mrs. Frederic says that the Regents have to make the next move.

When Pete refuses to let Myka save him, she grabs a broom and shoves him out of the containment circle. Meanwhile, Claudia gets to the processing center and, wearing neutralizer gloves, starts pulling the silly string out of the cogs. However, when she takes off her gloves to get a better grip, she discovers the stuff sticks to her hands... and won't let go. With five minutes left, the mechanism starts to pull her in.



While Pete recovers, Myka goes on ahead and finds Claudia stuck. She tries to free Claudia and gets stuck as well. Pete arrives and looks for something to cut the string. With less than a minute left, Claudia tells him to use the snow globe in her purse. Pete uses it to freeze the silly string and then shatter it with a hammer blow. The gears start turning, pumping the neutralizer fluid and stopping the explosion.



Outside the diner, Artie is waiting to hear what the Regents decide. Mrs. Frederic comes out to tell him that they're letting him stay on, in part because of her insistence that Artie is the best agent they have. As she leaves, she wishes Artie good hunting.



As Claudia finishes repairing the auto-vac and Pete cleans up, Claudia thanks Myka for believing in her. As they talk, Pete comes in and assures them that everything's cleaned up and Artie won't notice a thing. Artie comes in and wants to know what it is he won't notice. The trio tries lying but Artie figures something is going on and forces them to explain. However, he assures them that it's happened to him in the past and he cut it even closer to total meltdown. As they leave for Mexican, Artie mutters under his breath that they'd better enjoy their time off, because they're going to need the rest.

Share this article with your friends