The Syfy Channel has a handful of first run series, the best of which at the moment is Eureka. This is the story of a small town of super geniuses who didn’t want to live in Area 51 and the poor sap who ends up being the town’s Sheriff. The punchline of almost every episode of Eureka is that the idiot Sheriff is the only one to see the obvious solution to whatever earth ending problem the super geniuses have created that week.
The new season opens up with a collection of Previously on Eureka clips, the most interesting one being a small clip of Jack and Tess breaking up via hologram-this scene is interesting because it was never aired, never put in webisode, and never shown to the public in any form or fashion. The general consensus is that the actress who plays Tess got a much better job on Eastwick, but then that show was canceled so she went back to Eureka. This doesn’t explain why Syfy decided to blindside fans of the show and leave us stumbling along and searching the internet for a missing episode.
As the season opener rolls along it make a little more sense, we are assaulted on every side by new faces, new characters, and an alternate timeline where nothing makes any sense anyway. Among these changes is the statue of Archimedes now being made of bronze instead of stone. The hardest part for me to deal with was Baltar’s tough guy mafioso accent and his constantly calling the Sheriff ‘Sport.’
I’ll admit that the standard formula for Eureka can be a bit predicable, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Perry Mason was predictable, House is predictable, Three and Half Men is predictable-that doesn’t means it’s bad or unsuccessful. Nothing annoys me more than great shows changing the entire formula of the show. There is little danger of the new changes in Eureka being permanent. The great thing about Time Travel is that you can destroy the universe if you want to-so long as you still have the Tardis nearby, it can all be put back together again. Also, the usual the Sheriff Saves the Town formula was used in the season premier.
I like Eureka and look forward to the new season, but I never liked the autistic kid in the first place and am not crazy about him being the linchpin of the story. I would also like to see Stark return, since it seems his role in True Blood didn’t pan out very far.
One thing I did truly and completely hate in the season opener was the over use of really bad special effects ala Warehouse 13 and Sanctuary. Just because you have all those damned green screens laying around doesn’t mean you have to use them on EVERY SHOT! Ok, other than that I’m glad to see the return of Eureka.
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