What You Need to Know About Eureka

Okay, before we begin, a little background. “Eureka” is the story of a little American (Canadian) town where all the smartest people in the country have been gathered so that they can work on all the sciencey stuff that makes up modern life. The town is funded jointly by the government and a multinational corporation called Global Dynamics. Because corporations and governments always work so well together.

Our Hero is Jack Carter, a US Marshal, who, while driving his delinquent daughter Zoë across the country to her mother’s house, stumbled upon Eureka and inadvertently into a job as the local sheriff (it’s a complicated set of circumstances that lead to this, I’m not going to get into it.)

Carter’s best friend is Henry Deacon, a genius who splits his time between heading up Research and Development at GD and running the local gas station, because, you know, everyone needs a hobby.

Allison Blake is the no nonsense head of GD, who over the last three and a half seasons has alternated between butting heads with and worked side by side with Carter. They have a little love chemistry going on.

Jo Lupo is Carter’s right hand lady, serving as his deputy at the local sheriff’s office. At first you would think that a lowly sheriff’s deputy would not need to be a genius, but as it turns out, like everyone else in town Jo is way book smarter than Carter, and she holds a doctorate degree too. In what I’m not 100% sure. I’m going to go ahead and guess it’s a PhD in Kicking Ass.

And last and least, rounding out our main cast is Fargo, the bumbling assistant to whoever happens to be in charge of GD at the time.Fargohas a good heart, but he is the King of Making Things Way Worse, everything he touches seems to explode or fall apart or malfunction just at the exact wrong time. Think of him as Gilligan without all the brain damage.

For the last 3 ½ seasons of this show (officially, last night’s episode marked the second half of season 4, even though the first part of season 4 happened last summer. Don’t ask me, I think it’s stupid too.) The plot of the show has run like this:

Something goes wrong at Global Dynamics.

Carter, being he local law, is brought in to look at things while people make jokes about how stupid he is.

Allison and Henry talk techno babble circles around each other.

The smarties, all to busy to see what’s right in front of them, miss something important that Carter with his mere average intelligence can see right away.

Things seem fixed until Fargo walks into the room and causes something even worse to happen.

Everyone runs and screams and yells insane sciencey stuff that no one is meant to understand at each other.

While this is going on, Carter comes up with another simple solution, which again, all the smarter people have overlooked.

Allison and Henry implement Carter’s plan, using him as a lighting rod/decoy/sound dampener/crowd control, and it works.

Everyone goes to the local café (Café Diem) and enjoys a nightcap.

There is usually an overarching story that connects each episode in the season.

This is the formula. As the fine folks over at televisionwithoutpity.com say, “Eureka” is the “House” of science fiction. Unlike “House”, “Eureka” is full of fun characters who don’t take themselves too seriously. Unlike “House”, I can sit through more than 3 minutes of “Eureka”.

So, like I said earlier, there are 3 ½ seasons of history that come before the premier of season 4.2 that happened last night, but all you need to know is this:

At the beginning of Season 4, Carter, Allison, Henry, Fargo, and Jo were all transported back to the 1940’s when Eureka was still a small American (Canadian) Military Research Facility. In spite of repeating over and over again that they shouldn’t do anything to change the past, they end up bringing a hitchhiker form the past back with them in the form of Dr. Gilas Baltar, this changed some stuff, so forget everything I told you about our main characters before, here are their new alternate reality reboots:

Jo, Carter’s former deputy, is now the Head of Security at Global Dynamics, giving her just as much (if not more) power around town as Carter. Also on a personal front, her boyfriend Zane, who started out as a criminal and through the power of her love, had been rehabilitated into an upstanding member of Genius Society, is no longer her boyfriend. Doesn’t even like her, in fact.

Allison, the former head of GD, is now just the head only of the Medical Department, but more importantly, her formerly Autistic son, Kevin is now completely “normal.” Because why would you want a character on a television show to reflect a reality that millions of families have to deal with every day? That would be silly.

Henry, who was single in the other reality, is now married to a lady he had only met once. I have not committed her name to memory, because every other woman Henry has had a relationship with has died in some sort of Horrible Explosion, and frankly, I’m not going to get too emotionally invested in The Good Lady Wife, just in case the same fate awaits her.

Fargo, who was a bumbling assistant before, is now the HEAD of Global Dynamics. Which in the last part of season 4, was just as terrible as you think it would be. He’s Gilligan without the brain damage. In charge of a multinational corporation.

The only character whose life wasn’t completely changed by the alternate reality was Carter, who is still the sheriff. And still the smartest dumb guy in the room. The craziest alternate reality thing that happens to Carter is that his house is dating his robot deputy.

Did I mention that Carter’s house is an Artificially Intelligent bunker named SARAH? No? Because that’s kind of important.

Okay. So now that you know everything you need to know to get intoEureka4.2.