This was my second dedicated viewing of Eureka for the website here, and though I liked it fine last week, I find we’re solidly in sophomore slump territory this time out. It was enjoyable enough, I guess, but there were a lot of problems, the central mystery wasn’t very mysterious, the red herrings were actually walleyed bass, and the resolution was a bit Trek for my liking (“Oh, crap! We’ve only got three minutes left in the episode…ok, wave a magic wand and have everything be better again!”), but it felt sup-par. And kinda’ boring, really.
PLAY BY PLAY:
Sheriff Carter is going in for his bi-annual competency and fitness exam, just as Jo is finishing hers up. A woman we’ve never seen before tells Jo she’s perfect, then they lock Carter in a big room with ‘a test that is specifically designed for him and unlike any test anyone else ever faces.” He’s given a panic button to admit defeat, and then goes in. He’s told to push a button in the wall, and when he takes a step towards it, the floor falls away. He tries several methods to get to it, all of which fail rather comedically, and ultimately, after eating up about five minutes of air time, he just throws the panic button at the other button on the wall, and that resolves that.
I don’t want to give the impression by “Eating up five minutes of air time” that this wasn’t enjoyable or anything. In fact, it was pretty much the highlight of the evening, it just wasn’t, you know, up to their usual standards. Or rather not up to my nebulous conception of what their usual standards are.
Meanwhile, Jo is in charge and she’s called in to give her opinion of a super-hyper-technical DNA scanner that will allow the government to know people’s exact whereabouts at all times. As usual, Henry doesn’t like this, and as usual Allison thinks it’s at least got the potential to be swell. Jo casts the deciding vote in favor, and some guy we’ve never met before puts her in the scanner, which immediately malfunctions and electrocutes Jo. Turns out it was sabotaged.
Despite coming out of a two or three day long physical test that “May cause post traumatic stress,” and having been electrocuted unto unconciousness, and having to babysit Zoe, they let her stay in charge of the investigation. More electrical hoo-hah goes missing from around town. Meanwhile, Jo gets to acting wonky - she lets Zoe go out late at night, compliments her on her singing when she’s clearly terrible (Nice hat, though), and then sings a vaguely-steamy version of “Making Whoopie” to Fargo. Henry and Allison recognize that she’s acting oddly, but let her stay on the case.
The next morning she’s got no memory of what happened, and seems to be behaving normally, but she’s been framed by someone using the new DNA-scanner Magoffin to cover someone stealing yet more electronic stuff for unknown reasons. Jo takes this to mean the girl we never saw before who runs the competency testing must have done it, and indeed she did because she was hot for Fargo’s spindly bod, and knew Fargo was hot for Jo. Also, she appears to like guns. She was the one stealing all the
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Comments
27 December 2008
12 min 13 sec
Email me at three@republibot.com and we'll work out the details of you reviewing the show, ok? And thank you!
16 July 2009
6 days 14 hours
Or should I say bot? Regardless, I really I don't think we could ask for anything more. *grin*
Also, I'm rather interested in reviewing the show if possible. The wife and I tend to be rather faithful in our watching it every week. (To the point where I think I watched this episode a total of two or three times from it being one 5 or 6 over the course of the weekend.)
23 December 2008
2 hours 18 min
[grin]
27 December 2008
12 min 13 sec
Yeah, sorry about that. As I said, I'm not the closest, most attentive viewer of the show. Well, I wasn't anyway - now that I'm reviewing it, I do feel the need to take it seriously on behalf of the readers - and I just honestly mis-heard it. Embarasing. A lesser man would no doubt go back and change his mistakes so as to appear better than he actually was, but that's not the kind of man I am.
A *lazy* man, now *that's* the kind of man I am.
23 December 2008
2 hours 18 min
Because I haven't seen it yet.
I think RB3's just having some more Firefly withdrawal with the Zoe/Jo thing. (Either that, or it's another case of his 'creative spelling') Thanks for giving him positive re-enforcement instead of blasting him for last week's goof. (You know these creative types.... )
16 July 2009
6 days 14 hours
They do mention Lexi, even if she doesn't appear. Something about being off at a chakra thing. But for the rest of it, I agree that this episode was truly sub-par. My main problem with it was that it could have been really good if they had just handled it better. And what was with Jo haring off to confront Fargo's girlfriend by herself? Not that that's not something I could see Jo doing it was that I couldn't imagine Henry or Allison letting her. Kind of like, "Hey we've got two Jos, might be a good idea to figure out how to tell them apart."
Oh, and it's nice ot see that 3.0 got Jo's name right this week. You spent the entirety of last weeks review calling her Zoe.
27 December 2008
12 min 13 sec
Thanks for the info on a 4th season. I agree this was probably the worst episode I've ever seen, but I actually liked last week's ep. Nice jaunty little welcome back to the show.
I agree it must suck when your star has a prior comittment (I wonder what it was?) but it must also suck for the stars themselves when a network spreads a season over two years or more, so they're not working consistently.
BTW, a couple of the "Doctor Lite" episodes are freakin' great, and "Blink" was probably the best episode they've done since the show came back from the grave, so it doesn't *HAVE* to be terrible, but, you know, writers get in a routine, they get thrown out of it by cast or availability problems, and much of the time it seems they can't cope.
27 June 2009
7 hours 19 min
For the record I hate karaoke but that in no way effected my assessment that this is the worst episode ever. One has to suspend belief for a show like Eureka to work but that does not excuse the characters acting like idiots. The first clue that something was amiss might have been Jo walking around with a BFG but no one seem to think this was odd.
This episode was just badly written with the main characters not acting as they normally would have, Alison and Henry would have gotten Carter out of the test right off the bat with Jo complaining she could do the job. It must suck when a main character has a prior commitment.
Another point is this must be the third or fourth show where someones DNA is going wacko, is this going to be like Star Trek TOS where every other planet was some sort of parallel earth. The preview for next week looks to be an alternate time line story, I think they have only done two of those.
I liked this show for it's plan 9 from outer space qualities but the last two episodes have just stunk. Or it could just be me with the high fantasy and comedy coming out of Washington lately maybe my bs threshold has been lowered to near zero.
27 June 2009
7 hours 19 min
i have not watched this one yet, it sits in my dvr so i will save any comments on it till later but Wikipedia clams the show has been pickup for a fourth year.