Sanctuary: Get Well Soon

In the past seasons, Sanctuary has been rather like a sick friend: sweet, likeable, but not the most exciting company.  Some of its ailments are incurable (Amanda Tapping's obviously fake English accent), but some others seem to be improving (the overly simple 'capture the monster-of-the-week' plots). 

The season began with the conclusion of the best episode yet, one that combined Sanctuary politics and an evil plan to use a powerful abnormal.  Our heroes had to rescue, rather than capture, the monster-of-the-week, and said monster turned out to be incredibly interesting for a change -- she was both a giant spider and the beautiful Kali, a goddess of creation and destruction.  The episode was fast-paced and complex enough to hold my attention. 

The episodes since then have not quite hit the high of that big-budget cliffhanger, but they have been satisfying nonetheless.  Questions have been raised: Who are the powerful abnormals Will saw with Kali in his vision?  Who are the invisible abnormals who also want to know?  Who arranged the death of Big Guy's friend?  These mysteries, and the clues the characters will find, add a second layer of complexity that simply wasn't present in the previous seasons.  All of the episode plots except one have connected in some way to this larger story, and the one that didn't, "The Bank Job" was original, suspenseful and funny enough to keep me riveted anyway (our characters pretended to hold up a bank!). 

Now that Sanctuary is feeling better, it also seems to be recovering a sense of humor.  It's especially funny when it pokes fun at itself, for example, when a hostage in"The Bank Job" says of Helen's British accent, "I knew it was fake!" or when Amanda Tapping (Helen) of Stargate fame insists that Henry's theory of aliens is ridiculous. I would like to see even more humor on the show; even monster-of-the-week was fun on Buffy, with Joss Whedon's snark enlivening the script. 

Sanctuary is still not as healthy as Syfy's best shows, Stargate and Battlestar Galactica, but I'd say the prognosis looks good.