In Review: The Librarians And The Fatal Seperation

Synopsis: When the Monkey King’s sacred homeland of Shangri-La is taken over by a ruthless collector of magical artefacts, than balance of the Universe is put in Jeopardy, forcing all the Librarians to come together to help save the imperilled land… at what could be a terrible cost.

Review: The Librarians get to meet the Monkey King in this adventure, which mixes a little Arthurian mythology with the classic Chinese myth of The Monkey King, which I remember seeing as a kid in an imported series called ‘Monkey’, which starred Masaaki Sakai in the titular role. 

This new version of the legendary Monkey King is a much calmer and balanced individual who is played wonderfully by Ernie Reyes Jr.

The episode starts with Jake Stone learning various forms of Martial Arts from The Monkey King, but when a sudden ninja raid by ruthless collector Sterling Lam seizes control of Monkey’s staff and Shangri-La. Jame has to hustle back to the library to enlist the help of his fellow Librarians.

This episode is really quite wonderful because it begins to bring all the plot threads together and provides us with some further context and story behind Jenkin’s past life as the legendary Arthurian Knight Sir Galahad, which in turn is thanks to the fact that Charlene is found and revealed to be Guinevere.

Indeed aside from Jake Stone showing off his new fighting skills and Casandra coming to terms with the fact that her power over mathematics has quadrupled and Baird finding out something about herself that she’d rather not. This episode proved to be a final adventure for Charlene who was once again played by the fantastic Jane Curtin.

The episode chooses to do a few fun and character developing character beats over making things to complex with regards to story line. But don’t be fooled. I’m pretty sure that they are saving the best for last and we’ll get to see an epic finale next week in which the team will see yet more sacrifice in their final battle against Apep.

Amid all the drama there as fun to be had. As Cassandra gets a moment to play the more confident version of herself as a Pirate who is trying to sell Artefacts to  Sterling Lam. Of course Cassandra’s newborn confidence comes a little at the expense of Ezekiel when she explains that he cannot talk because his fillings fused his jaw shut. This was made extra funny by the fact that Lam was telling a story about having heard Ezekiel talk and said that the thief came off as extremely arrogant. Of course Casandra agreed with him.

But the star turn in this is the Monkey King. Who I hope we see again sometime, but also the touching and sad farewell to Charlene. Sad because its closing out a chapter that predates the series and kind of brings some closure for Flynn, but also provides context for Jenkin’s and his Camelot connection.

Over all this was a great episode, which succeeds in keeping you on the hook and whets the appetite just enough to keep you hanging on for the season finale, which will air next week. It also allows Christian Kane to show off his Martial Arts skills, which is something he hasn’t been able to do since the days of ‘Leverage’.