Sanctuary: “The Five” (recap)

By Julia Diddy
Fancast.com

Major revelations nearly outnumbered the pointy-toothed predators in this particular episode. What’s the deal with Helen’s unusually advanced age of 147? And which regular cast member was harboring a particularly hairy alter ego? Read on.

At the outset, Helen is lecturing in Rome when a familiar face enters the back of the room. The mystery gent passes a note to a proctor, who carries it to Helen. It reads that she will be killed within minutes unless she meets this fellow outside. Who can resist such an invitation? She follows, because staying alive is kind of pleasant, most days……

The mystery gent is Nicola Tesla – the very same genius inventor from the turn of the century. While he’d like to stand around reminiscing about the good old (old, old, old) days, he informs Helen that the Cabal (they of the Fata Morgana episode) are seconds away….and indeed, their Matrix-looking black-clad butts are turning the corner at that very moment. Helen and Tesla spirit themselves away posthaste…..and seeing as how it’s Rome, the Catacombs beneath their feet provide a handy escape route.

Back home, Helen left Will “in charge” of the Sanctuary. Only our fastidious bookworm seems to have a difficult time convincing staff-meeting-adverse Bigfoot to tow the line. Will soon realizes that his authority only carries weight with beings he can physically intimidate – which, given his surroundings, might include pixies, and maybe the dust bunnies beneath the furniture.

Ashley shows up to a meeting with her old informant Squid – only to find herself tazed by John. Don’t you hate it when you think you’re going to have tea with a fish-faced stool pigeon, and there’s a time-traveling Victorian supervillain waiting to ambush you instead? (How’s that for an occupational hazard?)

Tesla and Helen are on the run. He eludes to their shared past – which seems to involve Helen, John and Tesla playing with a syringe. When a few of the Cabal agents manage to catch up, we see that Tesla’s particular brand of immortality is more of the Bram Stoker kind, as he suddenly sprouts fangs and blackened shark eyes. Perfect guy to be lurking around in the Catacombs with.

Back at home, Will has his own irksome rogue predator to contend with……as something has gotten loose in the Sanctuary (yes, again) and is leaving claw marks and scales all over the place. Will sends Henry to review surveillance footage.

It suddenly strikes Helen as odd that the Cabal guys only showed up after Tesla appeared on the scene…….and that she didn’t receive a heads-up from her network of informants beforehand. Seems it’s him they’re after.

Ashley revives and finds herself bound to a chair. While the dude who once roamed the streets of London as Jack the Ripper is normally the last guy you’d want to see under such conditions, John assures her that he means her no harm – he’s dreadfully sorry about nearly feeding her to that giant iguana, by the way – and that in fact, he needs her help. He’d also like to share a few deep, dark secrets about her mother. Ashley’s confused. Didn’t Mom kill this guy dead already?

Speaking of guys that her mother has killed, Helen is rehashing old times with Tesla – like the time she helped him fake his own death so that he could continue on with his crazy mad scientist schtick uninterrupted! Ah, those were some fun memories! And why are the Cabal guys after him, anyway? He’s being a tad circumspect about that particular topic.

Back at the Sanctuary, the Jeckyl/Hyde dude has been ambushed in the elevator. So, having eyes in the back of your head is only useful if your other half isn’t into closed-eyed meditation, as it turns out. Henry is reviewing surveillance footage with Bigfoot and Will, but poor Henry is feeling more than a little under the weather. Will wants to crack the whip and keep working, but Bigfoot insists on dragging Henry back to his bed for some Sasquatch-mandated rest.

To hear Tesla tell it, his kind (meaning vampires) have been persecuted for centuries despite having been responsible for all the important advances in science, medicine and the arts since the dawn of time. It was really only after Bible-thumping humans got all up in the vampires’ unholy bloodsucking business that humanity started going to hell in a handbasket. Nay, Tesla is not overly fond of measly mortals. Before long, he admits to Helen that he needed to see her for two reasons – one being that he requires her assistance in completing his most recent mad scientist type experiment, but the second reason being that he looooves her. (That’s quite the list of admirers that our Helen has to show for herself – first there was the time traveling Victorian serial killer, and now an eccentric inventor with a taste for human blood. Forget about “He’s Just Not That Into You”….Helen ought to snap up a copy of “He’s Into You, Only He’s a Crazed Immortal” next time she’s at Barnes and Noble……)

Ashley is having a hard time swallowing that John and her mom used to be “close.” Ashley soon breaks free of her restraints, and does her usual kung fu whup-ass thing…..only John manages to upstage her by teleporting to all sorts of dangerous locations. Yes, teleportation trumps the kung fu whup-ass thing, in case you were wondering.

Will and Bigfoot are hunting the creature du jour at the Sanctuary. The supply closet has been ransacked – claw marks and blood stains are found in the general vicinity of a large stash of sedatives…several bottles of which are missing. So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that something with claws and scales and inhuman strength also has a drug habit?

As Ashley still isn’t warming up to John, he has no choice but to shed some light on her mother’s dark past. Seems Helen wasn’t born with abnormal genes that bestowed immortality, as she had suggested to her daughter. Nooooooo. The whole immortality thing came courtesy of some college-age hijinks. Plus, Mom’s invitation to the great big immortality party was addressed to Helen Magnus Plus Four……

Indeed, where other collegiates might join the chess club or the model United Nations, we learn that Helen, John and Tesla – along with two other gents named Nigel Griffin and James Watson – opted to play around with vampire blood. It was Helen’s idea. Only after shooting up with this unorthodox serum, each of the five found his or herself bestowed with some trippy side effects. While John was graced with a newly bestowed ability to teleport, Griffin found himself with photosensitive molecules, and Watson developed an uber-brain. Of course, as we’ve already learned, Tesla’s “gift” was to find himself transformed into a pointy-toothed grandiose jerk.

Back home, Will visits a convalescing Henry in bed, though Will can’t help but notice the large oozing wound on Henry’s arm, and the stash of sedatives on his nightstand. He presses Henry for answers as to his whereabouts earlier, only Henry can’t remember anything. Bigfoot gets testy with Will’s overzealous impersonation of a Hardy Boy. Back at his desk, Will decides to look into Henry’s personnel file – only he doesn’t have clearance.

Winding their way through the Catacombs, Helen’s a bit concerned about how she and Tesla will get out of this tight spot, what with most of the Cabal agents still hot on their trail. Tesla’s liking their odds, on the other hand, as creepy clawed, pointy-toothed colleagues of his start appearing out of the woodwork and making mincemeat of their pursuers……..

Helen sees the slaughtered Cabal agents strewn about the grounds and marvels over what sort of creature could possibly do such a thing. She soon learns that Tesla’s latest top secret mad scientist project really bites. He’s resurrected the vampire species – indeed, it’s a bloodsucker blowout, and Helen’s on the guest list. Even though Tesla’s supposedly on her side, she doesn’t look particularly reassured. Tesla revives the newly slain Head Cabal Guy with a few drops of his blood. Alas, it seems this creatures are dumb as stumps, which is where Helen comes in…..her old friend wants to know if she can help him smarten these monsters up a bit? At which point they’ll then rule over a ruthless and unstoppable army of the undead, together, happily ever after! Yay! Helen has a new boyfriend!

Only she’s just not that into him……..snap!

Will continues to harass Henry about what his deep dark secret involving seeping wounds and sedative dependency and weird bouts of amnesia might be about. Henry tells Will to scram.

Right about this time, John is explaining to Ashley that after her mother nearly tried to kill him, Tesla found him and nursed him back to health. Only when John refused Tesla’s request to join the undead revolution, Tesla tried to kill him, too. Poor John…..you can’t help but feel a bit sorry for him. With friends like these, an immortality serum merely provides recurring opportunities for his pals to attempt to administer an immortality antidote.

As John points out to Ashley, Tesla will probably want to kill her mother too. But Ashley must decide for herself: does John want to kill Helen, who – after all – tried to kill him? Or is he sincere about wanting to help her mom? Despite her reservations, Ashley decides to lead John in the general direction of Rome….

In response to Tesla’s invitation to enslave the human race via an army of the undead, Helen pumps Tesla full of lead. Alas, it’s not a stake to the heart, and it only temporarily stuns him, but at least it gives her a slight head start before he dispatches his small collection of man-eating nightwalkers after her.

Will finds himself face to face with fangs of a different sort as a giant serpentine dragon pops out of the very elevator he intended to catch. As the slithering menace closes in on Will, a hairy heap of heroic help materializes and knocks the beast out of the third story window. When Will looks outside, a werewolf lies on the ground below, and soon shapeshifts back into something that is suspiciously Henry-shaped. Will feels like a jerk for giving Henry a hard time about his blackouts.

Helen finds herself cornered by the bloodsuckers until John goes Ripper on their mutual acquaintance and quickly extracts Helen from her precarious position. Safely back in Rome, John departs, leaving Helen to have a rather awkward mother-daughter conversation with Ashley….who has already pieced together that John is in fact her father.

Kudos to the writers over the fact that Ashley comes to this realization of her own accord, and that such knowledge was not imparted in melodramatic Darth Vader-to-Luke “I am your father!” fashion.

Next week’s teaser indicates that Ashley is a bit bent out of shape over her mother’s omission. Also, a teenage boys goes a bit Carrie, and Henry longs to howl at the moon and maybe eviscerate his friends.

Never a dull moment at Chez Magnus……

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