This week we have
American civil war re-enactors and a pesky case of haunting.
This naturally pings
the Library’s radar - and in part it’s well timed because the librarians are at
each other’s throats: Cassandra is very much in favour of multiple Librarians
(supported by Jenkins - who is still heartbreakingly dealing with creeping
mortality, bodily function, food etc. And even talking retirement! NOOOOOOO.
Stop this! stop)
The tethering ceremony
is coming soon and Eve needs a Librarian to tether with, just one (JENKINS!
CHOOSE JENKINS! PLEASE GODS CHOOSE JENKINS! We know he can handle immortality,
he’s an incredible asset! JENKINGS!)
This is why Jenkins
and Cassandra stay back in the Library for an awesome high tea and looking for
the Librarian’s correspondence so they can see why the two warring Librarians
actually attacked each other. Which means a scavenger hunt because some
previous Librarians decided to move them and leave a series of cryptic clues
Look, I’m no fan of
the Dewey Decimal system either - but this is ludicrous
The civil war
re-enactment takes place in a town called Feud which is right on the
Mason-Dixie line and is all about the civil war, museums and turning it into a
vast tourist attraction
Jake doesn’t approve
of this because he’s a historian and all the fudging of facts for the sake of
entertainment Does Not Amuse Him.
Eve is also not best
pleased because, as a soldier who has actually been in combat, she is also Not
Amused by turning it into entertainment.
Both of them are a
little hostile when it comes to questioning the museum director about ghosts
etc. It doesn’t help that they all kind of assume she should accept the reality
of ghosts which just kind of feels so very very weird. I mean, I think we’re
expected to see her as unreasonable or evil or… something? For not just
believing these three random people telling her to shut down her big money
making event because ghosts? And she does mean things like call the police on
her when they break into her office and safe… so she’s definitely bad
apparently?
The story is that
during the war two brothers fought for separate sides and were not super happy
with each other. Their dear mother wasn’t thrilled by her little boys trying to
shoot each other in the face so left them a locket - broken in half in the hope
they would reconcile and reunite the rocket. The museum had one locket for a
while and now has found the second locket. Apparently separately so the assumption
is these brothers didn’t make up at all.
The town was renamed
“Feud” and this whole town built itself around this story. And the curator,
Janet Hedge, is very invested in it
Through this we have
plenty of ghostly visitations - including a woman in widow-weeds and a small
child who has lost things. And we have lots of snarking between Ezekiel Jake,
each showing off their skills to prove who is the greatest Librarian of them
all, much to Eve’s annoyance.
There’s also some
very dubious conspiracy theorists who are very very invested in changing the
results of who wins the civil war re-enactment. Which matters to some people… I
guess?
The re-enactment
happens, ghosts appear everywhere - and they possess the crowd to point guns at
each other. As do the two brothers - possessing Jake and Ezekiel: all to shoot
each other.
Eve prepares for
horrific disaster - except that the brothers miss (causing the whole crowd to
miss). Except this is intentional - the brothers chose the feuding Ezekiel and
Jake because they wouldn’t kill each other - because the brothers couldn’t
bring themselves to kill each other.
Doing some digging it
turns out that their history has been rather distorted and the ghosts join the
many not amused people with this town. Brother 1, the Union brother, turned
against the war after his young son died in a cross fire. Brother 2, the
Confederate brother, fell in love with a Black woman which made him much much
less inclined to support the Confederate cause. When Hedge found the locket it
was united - the brothers had reconciled. But she hid the fact because she
thought it would be a better story
Because this woman is
just weird - because reconciling on the eve of death sounds like a much more
awesome story: and the Librarians agree that this is damn foolish
With their new found love of redemption and co-operation and reconciliation they return to the Library full of joyous happy co-operation and wanting many librarians
Except Jenkins and
Cassandra have taken a logical leap so vast it’s more of a logical plummet. The
letters from the previous Librarians revealed they went to war because both of
them started acting more and more selfishly. And since Cassandra and Jenkins
want to have more than one Librarian around - this means apparently they should
stop supporting a group of Librarian. Because… because? I mean, seriously they
don’t take this as a lesson to be not selfish or why more than 2 Librarians are
good because then they can counter any single Librarian who loses their shit?
Or how Jenkins and Eve as immortal guardians and a highly respected leader-figures
are excellently placed to counter any short-sighted selfishness. Or they could
consider that these Librarians are all such specialists that they work as a
collaborative force so are so much less likely to turn against each other. And
they have a Jenkins and an Eve.
This season keeps
pushing, over and over, these conflicts between the Librarians which don’t seem
to actually reasonably follow through with the logic and reason behind this. It
feels fake, it feels forced. And it ignores what they really really need to
focus on: saving Jenkins!
