Grace Under Pressure on EUREKA

Episode 510 “The Honeymooners”

It’s back to nature for the Carters!

Jack and Allison Carter, newly married while faced with drowning at the bottom of Lake Archimedes in a leaking experimental deep-sea submersible… (uhm.. where was I?) OK. They finally head out for a honeymoon.

Only it’s not exactly what Allison is expecting, like Fiji or Tahiti or Hawaii or … anywhere but a run-down cabin ten minutes away from Eureka. Y’see, Carter the sheriff inherited the cabin from Cobb the previous sheriff. So Carter thinks it’ll be a great “getting to know you” project for him and Allison. A fixer-upper.

In the meantime, back at Global Dynamics, Fargo and the gang have recruited Grace to come back so she can supervise the neural transfer of HoloHolly into NuHolly. The imagery of the body being printed is super-reminiscent of Star Trek: The Motion Picture as Lt. Ilia is on the table in sickbay after being turned into a probe…

Fargo: “One body coming up.” Holly: “I’ll take mine well done please.”

Back at the cabin, Allison looks nice and domestic, but she’s still all high-tech, wanting to call GD and have them send engineers to do the make-over (shereally wants out of there…), but Jack wants it to be just the two of them, working with their hands! He’s so excited! Until he puts his foot through the floor.

But wait. What’s this? A safe? Sheriff Cobb kept secrets? (Remember, this is alternate timeline Sheriff Cobb…) Only Jack has a tough time getting into the safe, using a hammer and chisel when he should be calling for someone with a tool that can cut open the safe. “I don’t need high tech. I’m old school.” Yeah. That doesn’t quite work out.

At GD, Henry sees this as a Big Moment, and he feels that he has to make sure everyone knows this is a Big Moment. Of course, it’s the only moment they’re going to get, because HoloHolly goes in and she doesn’t come out. If it doesn’t work, she’s lost forever. With that warning in place, HoloHolly now is able to give informed consent. The transfer goes, but the body doesn’t respond. Oh, noes! She can’t be dead. Again? Fargo won’t give up on her and gives her True Love’s Kiss (someone’s been watching “Once Upon a Time”?) and Holly’s back!

Out at the cabin, Deputy Andy uses his lightsaber finger to cut open Cobb’s safe, and Carter hands over the contents to his able assistant to take back to town, figuring it will keep for another week.

Thus our three stories are established.

Out of the three plot threads, the cabin in the woods was the weakest one, full of tired cliches about the money pit house and everything that could go wrong with it. Allison is clearly making an effort to keep her game face on, especially with the cabin literally falling apart around her. Put the brainy city girl in the woods, no running water, snakes and spiders and such like… a little thin. It only served to provide a break between sequences in the other two plots, although it did serve to set up one of them pretty well.

The idea that there could be a spy ring in Eureka is nothing new. We’ve just dealt with the Consortium, so we know there are people plotting against the town. And Beverly Barlowe was part of that.

But now we have our heroes dealing with alternate timeline information that paints a very different picture, and it’s the data on the memory disc that fuels the conspiracy back into motion – and Eureka gives us their homage to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, with a betrayal and a shadowy figure “sneaking into the lab” to lay hands on the memory disc before Henry discovers what’s on it, and who’s implicated in the espionage.

But we do get some fun moments with Andy and Jo, because he’s just super-excited to be hunting spies! Only the investigation is hampered by Vincent and his big mouth… or is it? Vincent gets to play the part of the Star Trek VI overhead voice calling for the court reporter to go to sickbay, and he blabs to everyone within earshot that there’s a spy ring, and that data disc is the key to solving who’s betraying Eureka!

And in the role of Valeris … Grace!

Yes, friends, alternate timeline Grace was recruited to help with Beverly’s shenanigans, but she never expected things to go the way they did, which is why she left, so she could figure out who else was involved in turning the espionage outfit into a group that isn’t above killing people to achieve their goals. And she had to destroy the disc before Henry could decrypt it because it reveals that the other spy is Henry!

Remember, Henry stepped into the shoes of alternate timeline Henry, so we have no good idea what that other Henry was like. It’s an interesting twist to find out that alt-Henry was not the guy we know and love. Maybe even the opposite? With a goatee? That version of Henry would be interesting to watch. And we’ve seen hints that he’s capable of doing things that wouldn’t necessarily be on the Light Side of the Force.

So what implications does this leave for the remaining episodes? How will this betrayal (which actually isn’t a betrayal) of Henry affect how he sees his wife (who’s really the other Henry’s wife…)?

In the midst of this, Holly’s having a core meltdown, first adjusting to the new body just fine, but then having spasms of disconnect when she thinks she’s still in the matrix. Felicia Day gets to play paranoid this time out, and we’re so used to seeing her as the loveable quirky nerd girl, that it’s eerie to see her with this much fear pulling her into a ball. You want to wrap her in a blanket and give some warm milk. The vulnerability in her performance should have her in the running for an award, but since this is science fiction…

Moving on!

Holly’s paranoia is caused by something going haywire in the Exo III skeleton (see what I did there?). Zane and Fargo have to figure out how to “reboot” her, especially since they can’t take her out now.

And then Carter comes back from the cabin. And remember, HoloCarter killed Holly, and she retains a memory of that. Which gives her even more reason to freak out, grabbing Carter’s gun and waving it around like a crazy person. It’s Fargo who saves the day, talking her down and getting the gun back. Just more demonstration that Fargo’s grown up a lot this season.

In the end, everything works out – as it always does in Eureka – with the major question now being whether Henry can deal with the revelation that he’s a bad guy in this reality. And what’s to be done with Grace?

The coda at the cabin: Allison decides that she’s going to pitch in and get her hands dirty, because ultimately Carter’s right. They need to do something together to build a foundation for their marriage. Everything else in their lives is about work. It all centers around Global Dynamics and pick-your-scientist who has an experiment go awry. At some point, they have to get it together as a married couple with kids.

And even though it’s the weakest thread of the three for this episode, it’s got its charms. And even though Allison comes around, like we knew she would, she gets the last word in on a real honeymoon. Because you know she’d rather be in a bikini on the beach somewhere.

Sometimes, Carter can be a little thick in the head.

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