Whereas The X-Files had a monster of the week, Warehouse 13 has its relic of the week, starting in the first episode with Lucrezia Borgia’s magical hair-comb as the object that the constantly bickering team of Myka (Kelly) and Pete (McClintock) have to track down and take care of before a whole town is ravaged by romantic rage. It nicely sets up the rest of the series, which will also unveil other interesting things such as an unreleased pop record with mood-control properties, Lewis Carroll’s mirror (a personal favorite for Kelly, an admitted Alice in Wonderland fan) and Adolph Hitler’s microphone. “If we can do an artifact that really sort of forces Pete and Myka to look at themselves or to look at the world around them a different way or to get the audience to sort of reconsider something,” Simkins says, “then we know we’ve landed on our artifact that we can probably run with.” (He also reveals that this is the 13th of such warehouses throughout history, so keep that in mind as the season goes on.)

As much as the series is about the weird things our heroes find on a weekly basis, it’s also about the pairing of two opposites in the buttoned-down, no-nonsense Myka and the cookie-loving, overgrown kid Pete. Both Kelly and McClintock say their characters’ chemistry was there even during their first audition. “I screwed up a line and he started making fun of me in the audition,” Kelly recalls, “and I stopped them and tried to restart the audition again. And those were the two characters. I mean, it was kind of right on the money.” McClintock adds: “I’ve been describing our relationship as I’m the younger brother who’s constantly pulling at her pigtails, and she’s in turn always punching me in the arm. It’s actually kind of how it goes — minus the pigtails.”

The producers know that there will be X-Files comparisons, but Kenny sees Myka and Pete more like a pair of Indiana Joneses. “He never feels like he knows much more about the situation than you know as you’re watching him, but he manages to get through and find his way. And that’s the sense I get with Pete and Myka. They’re sort of thrown into these situations, a different one every time. They don’t know what’s going to happen, they don’t know how an artifact works, but they’re getting through it anyway using their wits and their observation powers.”

And how would Kelly and McClintock fare as real Secret Service agents? OK, McClintock thinks, “as long as it didn’t include, you know, mathematics.” “I’ll take the math,” Kelly says. “Being a Secret Service agent would be cool, man. You could wear those headsets and run around with guns all the time. I mean, what’s not fun about that, right? Diving in front of the bullets, maybe not so much.” McClintock chimes in: “That’s why Joanne and I are so suited for our characters. She is the mathematician and I’m the bullet-diver.”