There are some shows that catch you by surprise. You might have heard of it and thought “meh, not for me” and didn’t really think about it again. Then one day there was nothing else on so you caught an episode or two and everything changed. Recently, this happened to me with the show Eureka. It’s on Syfy and the rest of season 4 starts on July 11th.
Eureka is the story of a town filled with geniuses. Most of its residents are scientists and the ones that aren’t are extremely talented at whatever they do. The town was Einstein’s own idea. The “base” of Eureka is Global Dynamics, the town’s advanced research facility.
From Syfy’s website:
A (Confidential) Town History
With the help of Albert Einstein and other trusted advisors, President Harry S. Truman commissioned a top-secret residential development in a remote area of the Pacific Northwest, one that would serve to protect and nurture America’s most valuable intellectual resources. There our nation’s greatest thinkers, the über-geniuses working on the next era of scientific achievement, would be able to live and work in a supportive environment.
The best architects and planners were commissioned to design a welcoming place for these superlative geniuses to reside, an area that would offer the best education for their children, the best healthcare, the best amenities and quality of life. A community was created to rival the most idyllic of America’s small towns— with one major difference: this town would never appear on any maps. At least, none that haven’t been classified “eyes only” by the Pentagon.
Thus, the town of Eureka was born. But for all its familiar, small-town trappings, things in this secret hamlet are anything but ordinary. The stereotype of the absent-minded professor exists for a reason, and most of the quantum leaps in science and technology during the past 50 years were produced by Eureka’s elite researchers. Unfortunately, scientific exploration is rarely what one expects, and years of experiments gone awry have yielded some peculiar by-products.
With the population’s unique talents, troubled psyches and limitless resources, these small-town concerns have a way of becoming big-time problems. It is at that intersection, where human frailty and super-science collide, that Eureka began…
Jack and Zoe Carter discover Eureka!
The pilot begins with Jack Carter, a U.S. Marshall transporting a girl, lost on his way to LA and getting stranded in Eureka. Jack is great at law enforcement but his intelligence is not exactly on the genius level. However, when a problem arises while he’s in town, he naturally decides to help. He uses his every day skills to look at situations from a different perspective than all the geniuses, which proves successful. He’s so impressive that he gets “promoted” from Marshall to sheriff of Eureka.
This show is smart and hilarious. There were characters that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like and ended up loving. For example Zoe, Jack’s troubled and snarky teen daughter, I expected to dislike because she was rebellious and bratty. Another example is Jo Lupo, the zealous deputy sheriff and gun nut. I had her pegged as the type of tough girl character I usually think tries too hard and ends up annoying. Instead, Zoe and Jo are both genuine, kind and strong. For a while I also tried to dislike Nathan, the head of Global Dynamics who is smarmy and arrogant and almost instantly becomes a sort of nemesis for Jack. However, even he won me over. Add in the town mechanic slash go-to genius, Henry, the lovable and goofy Fargo, and the lovely Allison Blake, you have an amazing and entertaining group of characters. OH and SARAH must not be forgotten. SARAH = Self-Actuated Residential Automated Habitat, and this is one smart house! The outside looks like a bunker, but the inside is amazing. And SARAH can fix you breakfast, regulate temperature, and scan your DNA, among many other things. Sarah is really a character herself, a sassy and sometimes intense character!
Crop circles!
Every episode, there’s a challenge of intimidating proportions. Jack has to interrogate and try to understand complicated genius jargon and often gets the answer “classified.” The town faces situations like vortexes, memory loss, extreme and unusual weather, citizens disappearing, possible alien invasion, renegade artificially intelligent beings on a regular basis. I like seeing how a whole town of smarties works, in positive and negative ways! Everything from the restaurant to the laundromat is run by geniuses! Of course, Jack’s ordinariness is both comic and refreshing, and it’s fun to see his reactions to all the “smart” problems!
If that’s not enough, the amazing Felicia Day is guest-starring this season! Sorry, apparently WordPress won’t let me embed the video! (also, if you don’t know who Felicia Day is, consider yourself gasped at. Check out The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. You will not be sorry.)
You can watch the first three seasons of Eureka on Netflix, but the fourth requires dvd’s (but episodes 5-10 are on Hulu). The second half of Season 4 premieres tomorrow on Syfy at 8/7 c, and the website usually has the last few episodes online! I encourage everyone to check it out!
note: pictures are from syfy.com
little black bookcase 