#warehousewatch: January and February 2017

Supergirl, like so many CW characters, lives in a converted warehouse.

I’m forever amused by how very many of the CW Network's shows feature warehouses, abandoned or otherwise, so I’ve set out to track every warehouse on every CW show I watch throughout the 2016/2017 season.

For science.

We're now nearing the end of the project, so if you missed the first two instalments I’ll direct you to the October report (which also contains more information about the genesis of #warehousewatch) and the November/early December report.

And now, without further ado, here’s a complete¹ list of warehouses that appeared on the CW in late December, January, and February:

THE FLASH, Season Three

Full disclosure: I somehow missed taking notes on an episode of THE FLASH during my previous warehouse recaps, and I have no idea which one it was so my episode numbers are all messed up. I think I’ve got them squared away as of what you’re about to read below, though.

• Episode Ten:
  
  • Barry teaches Wally how to rescue people from burning warehouses. Super important skill, that.
  • I feel like Barry and Iris’s new apartment is in a converted warehouse of the downtown sort, much like Kara’s place on SUPERGIRL. You know the type: a whole passel of floors to accommodate some office space alongside the storage areas. (Most of the converted warehouses in my own city fit this mould.) Whether or not it’s actually a former warehouse--and y’all know we’re counting it as such--it’s crammed full of white pillar candles as per the CW's presumed arrangement with the Vancouver white pillar candle suppliers lobby.
  • Wally confronts Plunder in Central City Museum’s inevitable private warehouse.
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • Barry and Wally train in one of the Star Labs warehouses. One assumes Star Labs built a higher than usual number of personal warehouses to offset the few buildings in the wider CW universe that don't possess their own personal warehouses. Or maybe it's because a supervillain founded the place. Take your pick.
  • Iris and Wally track an arms dealer to a warehouse, where Iris gets super cocky because she doesn’t believe she can die right now on account of Barry’s vision of the future. I always appreciate this kind of reaction to news of one's prophesied death. You live that dangerous life, Iris. You live it hard.
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • It looks like I missed taking notes on this episode, too, but according to the recaps I found online and my own memories of the show there’s one scene where the villain attacks Iris in her warehouse apartment and comes this close to killing her, despite the prophesied death thing. Eep.
• Episode Thirteen:
  
  • Barry and Iris hang out in their warehouse apartment.
• Episode Fourteen:
  
  • Barry and Iris hang around their warehouse apartment.
  • Much later in the episode, Barry dramatically increases the number of white pillar candles (and votive candles, and tapers, and floating candles) in their warehouse apartment. It’s pretty clear the Vancouver candle-suppliers lobby convinced the CW’s many prop departments to quit being so stingy with the candles during the back half of each show’s seasons. They’ve gotta ensure their best customer keeps on buying after TVD leaves the airways, you know.

SUPERGIRL, Season Two

• Episode Nine:
  
  • Kara and James both track their current villains to the warehouse district, where James battles them between two warehouses.
  • Mon-El now works at the warehouse bar, where Kara chats with him before she meets up with Maggie to talk missing persons in a joint journalistic and superheroic capacity.
  • A group of scientists in league with Roulette zap people to a distant planet via a machine they keep in--wait for it--a warehouse.
  • Kara and Mon-El discover the evil science warehouse and tell very poor lies to the scientists so they can get a closer look. NB: one of these lies involves Mon-El talking about Paris City, which made me laugh because a) of course someone who’s new to Earth in the DC universe is gonna think every single place name has City in it and b) one time my friend Jenny told me I had failed literally all the cities, but especially Paris City. (Thanks, Jenny.)
  • Kara goes about her business in her warehouse apartment.
  • We finally see where Alex lives, and her apartment's in the loft style one so often sees in converted warehouses. Still, I don’t wanna make a definitive ID until we’ve seen the place from the outside.
• Episode Ten:
  
  • An evil science dude holds Livewire captive in an abandoned warehouse with lots of dangling lightbulbs, which is something we've seen surprisingly little of on the abandoned warehouse front. Kara, of course, charges in to rescue her.
  • Kara’s warehouse apartment makes another appearance.
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • Kara goes to the warehouse bar to tell Mon-El she doesn’t like-like him. It’s awkward, and she chases it with another super-duper awkward encounter with Alex, who has to miss Kara’s Earth Birthday because she’s going to a concert with Maggie and Kara doesn't understand why Alex wants to hang out with her girlfriend at an event that can't be postponed instead of doing something easily reschedulable with her little sister.
  • In the alley behind the warehouse bar, M’gann and J’onn fight a white Martian called Armek.
  • Later, Armek returns to the warehouse bar to confront M’gann. Turns out, he’s her ex-husband. Everyone's got so many awkward relationship things going on this episode.
  • Later still, M’gann and J’onn talk outside the warehouse bar.
  • There’s Kara’s warehouse apartment again.
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • Alex invites the whole gang to the warehouse bar so she can come out to them.
  • Lillian reveals her son turned an entire mountain into a secret warehouse, proving anything can be a warehouse if you just believe.
  • Kara invites Mon-El to her warehouse apartment so she can tell him she really does like-like him.
• Episode Thirteen:
  
  • Mxyzptlk (whose name I've been pronouncing wrong my whole damned life) accosts Kara at her warehouse apartment. This involves a lot of white pillar candles, which I’m gonna take as further proof the lobbyists made a compelling case to the CW props departments.
  • Winn drinks alone at the warehouse bar and antagonizes some aliens who're spoiling for a fight before Lyra, a hot alien lady, steps in to rescue him. They hit it off. Awwwww.
  • Alex comes to Kara’s warehouse apartment to ask her for Valentine’s Day advice. They’re interrupted by a monster attack in the street outside, from which we may gather that Kara’s place, like Barry’s, is one of those central downtown warehouses.
  • Winn meets up with Lyra at the warehouse bar before their date.
  • Mon-El challenges Mxyzptlk to a duel out back of the warehouse bar.
• Episode Fourteen:
  
  • Kara and Mon-El make out in her warehouse apartment.
  • Some Cadmus lackeys drive a couple of big trucks out of one of their warehouse lairs.
  • Lillian and Hank assemble a device in another of Cadmus’s warehouse lairs.
  • All the Danverses and their significant others converge on Kara’s warehouse apartment for family supper. It gets tense when Mon-El questions whether Jeremiah is on the level or secretly a Cadmus plant. Everyone else takes umbrage at this, which proves they’ve either never watched TV in their entire lives or they’re stuck in the midst of one of those episodes that depends on everybody suddenly being stupider than they ought to be.
  • At the warehouse bar (which really needs a name, a la the Bronze), Mon-El shares his suspicions with Winn, who agrees to help him investigate Jeremiah because Winn has watched TV.
  • Later, Winn and Lyra play darts at the warehouse bar until Mon-El interrupts them to ask for relationship advice.
  • Kara and Alex (and their heavily armed team) descend upon a Cadmus warehouse in search of a bomb Jeremiah told them about, but the place is empty. It’s a diversion! What a huge surprise!
  • Kara and Mon-El work on their relationship in Kara’s warehouse apartment.
  • Lilian and Jeremiah plot in yet another Cadmus warehouse. Hey, I wonder if so many of the warehouses in this corner of the DC universe are "abandoned" because Cadmus bought ‘em all up and hasn’t gotten around to using too many of them yet?

NO TOMORROW, Season One

• Episode Ten:
  
  • The warehouse where the majority of the characters work plays a prominent role, as we all knew it would. This time, there’s a big fire inspection going down! Tense!
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • In this episode, the warehouse hosts a pillow fight and a wedding. Just for a little variety.
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • Cybermart's head honcho swoops into the warehouse to inform everyone their branch is closing! Oh no!
  • Evie and her friends travel to a nearby warehouse where they hope to get jobs. Everything is very strange. Like, the place has two microwaves and some peculiar things going on with the vending machines.
• Episode Thirteen:
  
  • The team moves into the new warehouse, minus Evie, and Karima promptly starts selling soft drinks as a lucrative sideline. Because everybody likes a warehouse bar, y'all.

FREQUENCY, Season One

• Episode Ten:
  
  • No warehouses, but lots of creepy woods.
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • No warehouses, but lots of creepy woods.
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • Frank and Megan track Robbie to his place of employment, which is a warehouse! Finally!
• Episode Thirteen:
  
  • No warehouses. Also, fewer creepy woods.

ARROW, Season Five

• Episode Ten:
  
  • The Bratva have a setup in a warehouse basement. Nobody saw that one coming.
  • Laurel’s evil twin flees to a warehouse. Another shocker.
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • Some villains hold a bunch of cops captive in a warehouse. Super original move, villains.
  • Oliver and Talia attack a Bratva warehouse.
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • Oliver and Talia attack some drug dealers outside a warehouse.
  • Oliver and Dinah throw a gangster through the window of a warehouse. Since “you can leap through plate glass windows without incurring the slightest injury” is one of the tenets upon which the CW’s superhero division was founded, we can assume this didn’t actually hurt him.
  • Oh, look, a nuclear weapons deal goes down in a warehouse!
  • Felicity and Rory track the actual nuclear bomb to a separate warehouse/aircraft hangar, where they thwart it.
  • Felicity comes to check on Rory in his warehouse/art studio/home, where he's ready to do a runner so he can figure out why the nuclear blast damaged his rags.
• Episode Thirteen:
  • Oliver dangles a gangster upside down in a location that’s either just outside a warehouse or just inside a warehouse with one wall missing. There’s a fire in a barrel nearby, as is so often the case in Star City's many abandoned warehouses.
  • Dinah appears to be living in a warehouse. Again, I wonder what percentage of CW characters are current or former warehouse residents. Bet it's decent if we count only major characters and spectacular if we add in all the villains of the week, what with warehouse lairs being so popular.
• Episode Fourteen:
  • Curtis and Rene shake a guy down outside a warehouse.
  • Oliver and Quentin confront Cupid, Liza Warner, and China White in an abandoned warehouse, but their capture and contain plan goes awry when a SWAT team crashes in to arrest Oliver (and ignore the three escaped convicts, because it's not like they present a danger to society or anything).
  • Oliver and Anatoly hide in a suspiciously warehouse-like hospital basement. I’ve gotta assume it counts as the hospital’s obligatory private warehouse.
  • The villainous trio shakes down a gang member outside a warehouse.

JANE THE VIRGIN, Season Three

• Episode Eight:
  • Finally, some warehouse action! Petra, in disguise as Anezka, asks Scott to meet her outside a warehouse so she can get the skinny on whether or not Rafael is making a move against her.
• Episode Nine:
  
  • There’s a brief flashback to the Petra/Scott warehouse meeting.
• Episode Ten:
  
  • And now there’s a flashback to Rafael’s dad’s storage locker, which we’re counting as a warehouse.
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • No warehouses.
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • Still no warehouses, with little prospect of any more on the horizon given the situation with Michael. Sadness, on many levels.

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, Season Two

• Episode Nine:
  
  • Various cast members sport the CW’s trademark aggressively terrible wigs on a movie set that’s both located inside a warehouse and made up to look like the exterior of a warehouse. So meta.
• Episode Ten:
  
  • The Legion of Doom has a glowing blue warehouse for a lair, as we all knew they would.
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • This episode’s heavy on both woods of the slightly creepy variety and white pillar candles, but its only warehouse scene involves a showdown between Rip and Jax in the Waverider’s secret weapons warehouse. Which I guess isn’t a secret anymore?
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • The team finds heaps of white (and red) pillar candles in Camelot, but no warehouses.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, Season Eight

• Episode Eight:
  
  • I feel compelled to note there are quite a few white pillar candles at the support group where Damon and Stefan search for souls to give Cade.
  • Caroline has a personal warehouse. Don’t @ me to say that’s just her garage. She’s clearly using it in a warehousey capacity.
• Episode Nine:
  
  • The Mystic Grill continues to embrace the warehouse aesthetic without actually being a warehouse; a favourite approach of CW locations.
  • Matt tracks the hell-summoning bell stolen from Caroline’s personal warehouse to the sheriff’s warehouse/evidence locker.
  • Damon has a few warehouse flashbacks.
• Episode Ten:
  
  • Heaps of white pillar candles! But no warehouses.
• Episode Eleven:
  
  • Lots of people mention the warehouse where Tyler stashed Elena’s body, but nobody actually visits said warehouse. Sadness.
• Episode Twelve:
  
  • No warehouses, unless the cave below the Armory counts, but there’re some white pillar candles. Gotta keep the show on brand, especially given the disappointing lack of white pillar candles in the first half of the season.
• Episode Thirteen:
  
  • And now we see a dramatic increase in white pillar candles, but no definite warehouses. Damon and Kai do kill a guy outside a loading bay that might conceivably belong to a warehouse, but since it’s in a small town downtown area I’m inclined to think it belongs to a diner or something instead.
• Episode Fourteen:
  
  • Again with the white pillar candles. Nobody visits a warehouse, but various characters do lurk around some creepy woods. To be honest, TVD did start out as more of a creepy woods show than a warehouse show, though it’s grown to straddle both milieus as it’s barrelled along.

RIVERDALE, Season One

• Episode One:
  
  • No warehouses, but lots of creepy woods. Also a big measure of asexual and aromantic erasure in Jughead’s case, plus a romance storyline between a presumed fifteen-year-old and a teacher. Not a good start for the show, and an especial disappointment given the things they are doing well, like the POC rep and Veronica’s arc. (I love a character who used to be awful and is actively working to change their approach.)
• Episode Two:
  
  • Still no warehouses, unless the morgue counts. No creepy woods either.
• Episode Three:
  
  • No actual warehouses, but there’re some locker rooms. I guess those are like warehouses for athletic equipment? Sort of?
• Episode Four:
  
  • No warehouses. One drive-in, which is like an outdoor warehouse for cars and people and yeah I don’t buy it either.
• Episode Five:
  
  • Still no warehouses, but lots of white pillar candles. I guess the CW’s higher-ups reminded RIVERDALE’s prop department they’re legally obligated to include at least one white pillar candle-heavy episode per season.

THE 100, Season Four

• Episode One:
  
  • Maybe Ice Nation’s Polis palace used to be a warehouse? Yeah, we’re gonna count it as such.
  • The whole city’s adorned with white and red pillar candles, too, as per the official rules.
• Episode Two:
  
  • Raven’s workshop is basically in a space station warehouse, so we’re gonna count it.
• Episode Three:
  
  • No warehouses, alas, but there’s a bunker full of dead people. Just to keep everyone's spirits up as they prepare for the end of the world.

A Few Conclusions

So, these two months gave us a total of 69 warehouse scenes across 48 episodes on 10 individual shows. The overall warehouse percentage holds steady from last time at a hair over 81%, with 39 out of 48 episodes containing at least one scene in a warehouse.

Obviously, some shows employ far more warehouses than others. ARROW maintains its lower but still respectable average of 3 warehouse scenes per episode, while SUPERGIRL has leaped in to cover the slack with an astonishing average of 5 warehouse scenes per episode. It ain't quite up to ARROW's early S5 average of 5.5 warehouse scenes per episode, but between Kara's warehouse apartment, the warehouse bar that's become everyone's favourite hangout, and Cadmus's monopoly on the abandoned warehouses in and around National City, I feel like SUPERGIRL is on track to become the network's new Queen of the Warehouses.

Sorry, ARROW. You had a good run.

JANE THE VIRGIN upped its warehouse game over the last couple of months with one genuine warehouse scene and two warehouse flashbacks. Meanwhile, FREQUENCY continued to evince a strong preference for creepy woods over warehouses, while RIVERDALE looks set to fill that gap now FREQUENCY is off the air. THE 100, meanwhile, has delivered two warehouses to date, with the potential for far more as its characters search the wreckage of a fallen civilization for the key to their survival.

If the CW has taught me nothing else, it's that warehouses are filled with expensive equipment you can salvage to make your post-apocalyptic existence a little bit easier.

That's it for this month. Join me again in early April for a look at all the warehouses these shows treated us to during the lead in to their season (or series) finales.

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1. I no longer watch SUPERNATURAL, I'm behind on REIGN, and I'm still waiting for my library to deliver the first season of CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND unto me, so I've left those shows off the list. You may recall I considered abandoning ARROW and LEGENDS OF TOMORROW earlier this season, too, but I've enjoyed the former more in recent weeks and the latter has zipped right back around to my brand of silly, so I'll at least finish out each show's current season.