“Parks and Rehabilitation” is episode twelve of season four of Warehouse 13.
In the previous episode, “The Living and the Dead”, the effects of the Chinese Orchid were stopped and Artie was brought out of his coma. Not that he really wanted to be, because in the real world Leena was dead (she wasn’t in his mind) and he would have to deal with the knowledge that he, or rather Evil Artie, was the one who killed her. It’s not like she can be brought back like Jinks was either; freeing him from the metronome in “The Ones You Love” was done by destroying it.
During the episode, Myka and Pete encountered the Count of St. Germain – not quite the charlatan he is known to be in the history books. He also apparently died. Although it looks like he didn’t, given that his body had gone and the spike stuck in him was left behind. He’d also taken a gem that belonged to Marie-Antoinette and the woman who hated him, and vice versa, turned out to be his wife. Perhaps the hatred is understandable.
This episode opens with Pete making a speech about Artie in front of the Regents. The others are there too. It looks like Artie is being tried, or something similar, for what happened when Magellan’s astrolabe affected him. Pete makes quite a moving speech, but perhaps an unnecessary one, as Mr Kosan says that they had already reached the same conclusion. They are not going to punish Artie. He seems to want to be punished though. Mr Kosan says that Artie having to live with the fact that he, under the astrolabe’s influence, killed Leena is a far more severe punishment than anything they could inflict.
Back at the Warehouse, Myka is not happy with how things currently are – Artie is clearly not alright – but Pete cheers her up by saying that some scary artefact thing will crop up. Perhaps ‘cheers up’ is not the right expression. Sure enough, something happens. There’s a man running through some woods in a panic whilst on a mobile. He trips and a figure finds him and uses a blue light which causes the ground to swallow him up.
Pete is at Cowan National Forest in Oregon, and the body of the man is being excavated. He’s pretty dead. Myka is still back at the Warehouse and Claudia is with Pete. Claudia does not seem to like the woods. She finds something carved into a tree, and stands on the dead man’s mobile. Which is also buried. Just not as deeply. The dead man is a telecommunications mobile whose currently under construction substation has incurred the wrath of the local green non-profit, Green First, due to damage it will cause to the wildlife.
The leader of Green First is full of bad things to say about the dead man. Until she finds out his dead. Then she falls apart a bit (not for the reasons that might be thought). The trail leads to a cannabis shop – it’s the place that the dead man was calling from his mobile. The owner of the shop is also dead, with the same symbol near him. He’s been buried under dirt. In his shop. Pete also remembers the symbol – from an ecoterrorist group. One who had a nasty reputation, but who have been out of circulation for a decade. Presumably they now have an artefact. Or maybe it’s something else.
Myka is staying at the Warehouse because she’s worried about Artie. Artie does not want people worrying about him. He’s grumpy about it. Well, grumpier – grumpy is kind of his ground state. Artie is doing all the things that Leena used to do.