The Librarians: The Next Chapter

I'm a big fan of The Librarian - movies and the series. This Next Chapter is still finding a bit of it's footing, but it does have much the same entertaining vibe. The plots are sometimes silly, but there is always hope. That's what I love about Dean Devlin - his shows have hope.

The characters are still getting fleshed out. Vikram is a bit of a jerk, but he has potential. I loved The Outpost, so I think Jessica Green just needs to show her kick-assedness a little more. Connor and Lysa are still finding their footing. (although I'm waiting for them to at least mention that Lysa actually owns the castle). And I'm curious to discover more about Elaine Astolat.

If you're looking for just fun entertainment, give it a watch (and the other Librarian shows too!).

Having enjoyed the past incarnations of this series, I was looking forward to "the Next Chapter", but, sadly, it does not deliver. The acting is so bad I'm actually not sure that they weren't intentionally trying to be camp and just missed the mark. The writing is equally inept. There are so many plot holes that the writers actually have to explain why they aren't really plot holes during the story. The nice thing about shows about magic is that you can always write something off to some obscure lore that nobody knew about until it suddenly becomes a brick wall to the story. I call it the "ah, well it doesn't work that way... unless there's a full moon" effect. 4 episodes in and so far.. a disappointment.

Building on the world created in the previous story and the original movies, The Librarians once again has the head of a magical library devoted to protecting the world from magic teaming up with a bunch of randos to repeatedly save the world.

Like the first series, this is incredibly silly. While the characters are all adults, they all act like they're about 15, and there are episodes heavily focused on things like, "why don't the other kids invite me to hang out with them." So that's weird.

But the show is quick moving and funny, and some episodes are actually surprisingly clever. The best episode to date (I think there have been 7 so far) involves a train trapped in time, which is fantastic. There's also an excellent take-off on cozy murder mysteries, with characters hurling their backstory at everyone that passes.

The characters are enjoyable, even if Vikram's librarian can be annoyingly pompous and Charlie wears these weirdly distracting contacts that make her pupils insanely pale. The best character is the mysterious Elaine, who unfortunately is only seen sporadically.

Some people here have pointed out that a lot of this makes no sense and is neither internally consistent no consistent with the original series. Which is a weird complaint, because The Librarians never made a lick of sense. My guess is these are people who were children when the first series was on and now they've developed critical thinking skills they didn't have at the time.

From the beginning, the Librarians has been fun and ridiculous, and this latest version is every bit as fun, and every bit as ridiculous, as you would want it to be. If you don't mind the silliness, you should definitely check this out.

I more or less enjoyed the predecessor (it was more my partner's thing, and I just sort of experienced it in passing) so we decided to try this one, too. It's more or less OK, as far as these things go, but the acting and writing is pretty poor, and as someone who has spent a lot of time overseas, I just don't understand why they've set in Belgrade but all the characters speak perfect English (maybe with an accent, but sometimes not) and all the signs in hospitals and all through the series are also in English. Seems very improbable to me (not that the magical elements are "probable"...). I suppose it doesn't do any harm, but it's hardly quality tv.

The story is a bit all over the place. While it was some years ago, I have fond memories of the original series and I was hoping for the same level of quality. The way the characters were introduced or more importantly - NOT introduced leaves gaps in information and instead of enjoying the story unfold, I am left wondering how and why.

In one episode there was a scene where ballet slippers had char on them from being burned, in the next scene no char, then char again when they were being examined in the scene following.

I don't mind corny when it is done well and sadly, this falls a little short in my opinion.

I'm going to keep watching in the hopes that it will improve and we get some of the holes in the story filled in.