The main guy is kinda dumb

Well, you have to realize that to our main character, it's not a sci-fi show. It's really happening, so it's very hard at first to believe the key really has special powers.

What does it matter whether or not the keyring is magical? He wasn't planning on tricking someone. I guess it would have been cool to check it out, but honestly, who cares?

If you're going to throw away the key, why not just give it to whoever who wants it so much, because then they would be off your back and you wouldn't have to move in the first place. And it's not so easy to just move to a completely new country just like that. Especially one where people don't speak your language.

But overall, yes, I agree, our hero could pick things up quicker. It is very common for main characters of to be really slow, because the show is made with a dense audience in mind. *sigh*

In 40 years, most object collectors couldn't accomplish what Joe did in a matter of days. He found and accessed the vault, found out that there was indeed an occupant, and located him. And that was in addition to figuring out who the Collector's were and what they tried to do, AND saving Conroy from the tormented hell she was in.

He's actually an exceptionally bright guy, but (much like Carter on Eureka) he's more street smart than book smart. The fact that he didn't determine how to get out of the situation or safeguarded the key properly within hours of receiving the key, and figuring out what it did, is no indication of his being dumb. It just proves he was human and as stunned as anyone else would be, in such a situation.

Granted, he used the resources available to him. As one would say, he stood on the shoulders of his predecessors, particularly the Legion and Kreutzfeld. But even Kreutzfeld might never have found the vault w/o Joe's intelligence in deciphering the point of the polaroids. Joe used the information they had all collected, and found patterns no one else ever had. Sounds pretty smart to me.

The less a man makes declarative statements the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect.

Right, because if you just saw someone walk into a room that doesn't exist and vanish, the first thing you're going to think of is "Oh, it must've been a magic key!"

He actually accepted pretty reasonably, people would go out of their way to not believe in magic if it was right in front of their face. That he didnt believe immediately was logical

He had his moments, but he also did some really dumb *beep* and put a little too much trust in people.

There were many times where I was absolutely sure the guy behind him was going to conk him over the head and steal the key or something. He left himself far too vulnerable far too many times and it would have been easy as hell to get the jump on him.

And what about the time when he accosted the scissor chick? "Here, let me just clothesline you, then as you're laying on the ground WITH SCISSORS STILL IN HAND, sternly reprimand and tell you to 'wait just a minute.'" No way at all would it be a good idea to IMMEDIATELY go for the scissors to remove the threat. Christ.

But the stupidest thing he did was warping himself out of the GODDAMN VAULT without taking a single object! Sure, he managed to get where he wanted in the end, but things could have gone horribly wrong if he wasn't lucky as *beep* and everything didn't go his way.

Any of those "extremely important" objects could have proven infinitely useful, but he just ignored them all.