Home Featured TV Shows All TV Shows Movie Reviews Book Reviews Articles Frequently Asked Questions About Us

Eureka: Worst Case Scenario

... in which the Global employees participate in a disaster preparedness drill, because apparently they haven’t had enough practice averting catastrophes.

So … another transitional episode. And a fairly slight one, at that. We finally got some resolution on the horrible quadrangle as Allison apologized to Jo for her behavior last week, and Jo seems willing to forgive and move on. (Please let this be the end of all that. I just want Carter and Jo to get back to being friends.) We also took some more baby steps in the developing “Fargo tries to bring Holly back from the dead” story. And Grace made some progress in her post-Matrix recovery, by realizing she missed Henry while working at CERN. Off screen. Yep. We didn’t even get to see Henry and Grace working through their issues. We just got to hear Henry talking to Carter about it. Sigh.

And, of course, we also had the disaster-of-the-week, which did nothing for me. I actually zoned out during the “worst” part of the worst case scenario because I was trying to figure out why I recognized Dr. Clark. I couldn’t remember if we’d seen him on Eureka before, or if I knew him from somewhere else. (I finally remembered after the show: Eugene Byrd plays Dr. Clark Edison on Bones. Back when I watched that show, he was always one of my favorite rotating interns.) And the fact that I kept obsessing over a character who was barely in the episode pretty much tells you everything about my reaction to it.

Other Thoughts

Dr. Clark: “I actuate worst case scenarios to illuminate catastrophic blind spots.”
Jo: “He pretends to blow stuff up to see how well prepared we are.”

The whole notion of Global even needing to conduct a preparedness drill is borderline ridiculous. I suppose it makes a certain kind of sense that DoD bureaucrats would force them to go through the process in reaction to the hijacking of the Astraeus mission, but these people create, confront, and resolve disasters on a weekly basis. They don’t need training to survive and recover from disasters; what they really need is training on how to avoid causing the things.

I was rather impressed that Fargo initially seemed to want to re-enter the Matrix just to get closure, not to try and save Holly. Granted, at that point, he didn’t know she might need saving, but it still seemed a very mature approach to his grieving process.

It was also nice to see Zane willingly helping Fargo. Those two have developed a nice friendship since ‘Liftoff.’ He may joke about wanting to fuel Fargo’s rebellious side, but it’s clear he was really doing it to help his friend find closure and peace.

[Jo gives Carter the brush off.]
Henry: “What did you do?”
Carter: “I don’t know! I mean, this is like the time I threw out her Guns & Ammo summer preview!”

Latest Carl-tastrophe: falling victim to “localized liquefaction in the bedrock.”

Jo: “Great. Containment breach in the aggression lab.”
Zane: “Somebody let their anger out?”

I was totally waiting for that hamster/guinea pig to go Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog on someone.

I wonder if those gel beds the Consortium used for the Matrix are comfortable.

So did anyone else find Holly’s somewhat casual acceptance of her death a bit weird? She seemed slightly bummed. Maybe a little shaken, but not horrified or devastated. Okay, I’m dead. Now what? Maybe her consciousness was in shock or denial. Or she was trying to hold it together for Fargo.

I also found the way Fargo broke the news to her to be a little too casual. “Sorry. You didn’t make it, Holly.” Shouldn’t he have been more worked up? That whole end sequence between them didn’t quite work for me.

Final Analysis: Not really a great episode this week. But hopefully it finally puts some irritating storylines to rest and sets the stage for something better.

Jess Lynde is a highly engaged television viewer. Probably a bit too engaged.

10 comments:

  1. "I finally remembered after the show: Eugene Byrd plays Dr. Clark Edison on Bones."

    Thank you thank you thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think she took it quite casually because she knew something was up, she might have been prepared for the news either by finding a rationale why the news is false or atleast not as bad seeing how something of her still exists. She is highly intelligent so she might have had some theories to rectify the situation. From the first time I saw Fargo in this episode, I kept on rememering that Fargo is an expert in Robotics and I kept on waiting for him to sugest building an andy like robot and downloading Holy's conciousness into it.

    I do however hope that there is a way to brig Holy as a human being, remember how Warren had rebuild his wife cell for cell in season 1. They did mention studying the process and maybe they can do it for Holy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. GD going through a disaster management and prevention gig is practically a real-life scenario.

    Astraeus disaster happened because of a senator. They let the blame fall on GD. "They weren't ready enough for a sabotage at her level so they were the ones to blame".

    So put GD through some tests. If they fail roll some heads and say "I told you so". If they pass "See, we fixed it."

    These things happen all the time (in smaller scales of course).

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Not really a great episode this week"

    Really?. Ok, it wasn't great, and the two final minutes where badly done, but this episode was better than the first five all put together.

    The writers have driven this show so into the ground that I will happy if they maintain this level of quality until the end. It's that bad.

    I loved Zane expressing the thought that perhaps we ourselves are nothing more than biological robots, with brains as hard drives. Nice to see someone avoiding religious mumbo-jumbo and nobody making a fuss about it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anon, we clearly want very different things out of this show --- or enjoy completely different aspects of it --- if you think this was better than the first five put together. :)

    I believe the issue of what makes a person a person came up back when Kim 2.0 arrived in Season 3. At least in vague terms. She was basically a highly complex data recorder, but Henry began to accept her as a reasonably close version of Kim. And that was a circumstance where Kim 2.0 was based more on a personality profile, and not Kim's actual consciousness.

    Speaking of Kim 2.0, some variation on that clone technology seems like a better option for Holly than an Andy-type AI. At least then she'd be a real flesh and blood person. I can't remember if she died because that was the only way they could download her data, or if there was a bug in her structure and she was breaking down. If the latter, they could cook up some fix to create a Holly clone.

    Of course, all that Kim stuff was in the previous timeline. I wonder if this timeline's Henry was involved in the development of the Columbia, or if the tech that created Kim 2.0 even exists in this timeline.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anon, We really have a different taste in this show, for me and others I've talked to the first five episodes were brillient some of the best TV I've seen this season.

    Henry is the only one with knowledge of all three time lines and I suspect Carter as well as in that shared dreaming episode he had minor flashes that we suposed to have been erased by Henry's Memory thinga majig(I couldnt resist) So He knows about Susan Perkins' brillient clone, He knows about Kim 2.0 and I am sure he read up on the cloning process that made her and since he retained his memory from the previous time line it means he still has the knowledge, and finally im sure at GD they have other cloning processes that might help.

    The question though remains, do they want to bring her back or not because there is enough premise to create Holy 2.0 without seeming like Deus Ex Machina if they want to

    ReplyDelete
  7. OMG

    I had a strange reaction to this ep : these people deserve a break from (a) disaster(s) ! I'm a point when I'd be happy to see NOTHING happening, simply playing softball, enjoying a nice summer afternoon and the only drama would be a sudden rain to spoil the remainder of the picnic !

    Agreeing with you Jess, time to turn the page on the issues from the start of this season.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The disaster stuff was overkill, considering they have a disaster every week. But I really liked the Holly plot. Holly already knew she wasn't her living self (not peeing for a month) so she knew she was probably dead. It'll be interesting to see which way Fargo goes with this. (It's sort of funny that nerdy little Fargo has the strongest romantic plot this season.)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Agree that in comparison to the first 5 episodes, this wasn't that great.

    Kinda of expected some sort of "let down" at some point. You could look at this episode and the next episode as sort of taking a breath in between major arcs. Meaning that we had a strong start to the season, and hopefully we'll have a strong end to the season, and just unfortunately we just have this lull period between the two portions.

    I still enjoyed it in portions, it just wasn't at the same level as the previous episodes.

    And to Anon: just a suggestion, but perhaps you should stop watching Eureka now before your brain explodes as I'm sure that we have more good episodes coming that you're going to consider horrible and that'll possibly lead to a brain explosion incident for you. Still, just a suggestion.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I was sad to be so close to the end of the show but perked up when I watched this episode. The coordinates were close to where I was going hiking soon. So I could do something fun to celebrate the show. The site is in South Central Oregon, east of Chiloquin in the Fremont national Forest. It would have been remote enough to hide a real Eureka.

    ReplyDelete

We love comments! We moderate because of spam and trolls, but don't let that stop you! It’s never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.