Parks and Rehabilitation is the perfect title for the 12th episode of this season. Everyone is healing. After Leena’s death, everyone has to deal with the repercussions. Despite killing Leena, the Regents are fine with letting Artie go back to work at the Warehouse, much to his dismay. He can’t comprehend why they would let him go back, but goes back to work none the less. Claudia, herself, is also worried about the effects of her stabbing Artie, though it is not mentioned by the Regents, so she really just has to face it herself.
Worried for Artie, Myka and Jinx stay back at the Warehouse, while Claudia and Pete go to investigate their case of the week. The case itself revolves around a group of ecoterrorists. It’s a basic case, that ends with a huge canyon going through a national park because of Courrières Mine Miner’s Lantern. It’s a pretty basic episode, though it’s hilarious to watch Pete make Yogi Bear references to a forest ranger who is clearly sick of hearing the references from him.
Meanwhile Artie is having trouble healing. He takes on the duties that Leena used to do without telling anyone and ends up in some trouble. We get to see what Leena actually did in the Warehouse, which I’m sad that we never saw her actually do, because it would have been awesome. But because Artie has a troubled mind, he places an artifact in the wrong place which ends up activating all sorts of artifacts in the Warehouse.
Jinx and Myka figure out how to stop it and realize that it is because the artifact is placed in a wrong spot. The circle that Leena used to tell where artifacts went was only effective with a clear and level-headed mind. Something that Artie obviously did not have. After the circle reveals his emotions to him, Artie comes to some grips about his own feelings and watches a video of Leena first making her vows to the Warehouse and things seem to start being patched up.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t just take one episode for everything to get better. Pete and Myka transported into the contents of an unfinished neo-noir murder mystery novel, while Claudia and Jinx are left to deal with a problem on the homefront with Artie.
Pete and Myka are thrown into noir Chicago in a kind of clever take on an otherwise ornamental episode. There are a bunch of hilarious lines that Pete and Myka throw around in the novel. I loved Myka’s mini-fangirl moment after realizing the twist of the story. The author, played by Keith Mars aka Enrico Colantoni which is the most perfect casting ever for a private eye novel, had written himself into the story after being unable to deal with the grief of losing his wife. Myka, being a huge fan of his novels, enjoys dressing up and playing the part and meeting him almost as much as she does reading his books. The mystery is a fun one, and it’s a great breath of fresh air after so much darkness.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Artie accompanies Jinx and Claudia to retrieve an artifact. It’s kind of one of those moments when you worry if whether or not Artie has actually gone off the deep end. At one point he literally stands in front of a moving car, and shoots at it until the artifact allows the car to pass through him. Concerned for him, since he is obviously at risk of being suicidal, Jinx informs the Regents of what happened, and they state that it might be time for them to “step in”.
It’s a great episode, not only because we get the cheerful ending, when the author is able to live out his life in the novel, happy, with a character he based on his wife in Bora Bora, but also because it is paralleled with the hopelessness of Artie’s case. The opposing emotions are what makes the show so great. Hopefulness and hopelessness. I am only kind of worried about what is going to happen with the Regents and Artie.
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