By Brandon Nolta

Virtual therapy devices. Talking houses. Computers that squeeze the power of a mainframe into a package smaller than an iPod. And this week, magical vanishing people that draw their histories and existence behind them like Alice going down the rabbit hole. Things are never dull in Eureka. I haven’t made up my mind yet whether life for Sheriff Jack Carter (Coin Ferguson) would be giddy fun or adrenaline-fueled terror if this town was real, but I suspect it would be somewhere in-between.

Anyway, the plot: Sheriff Carter has an eventful morning in Eureka. His ex-wife Abby (Olivia d’Abo) is getting ready for daughter Zoë (Jordan Hinson) to come back with her to L.A., which has Carter in deep denial. Meanwhile, Henry (Joe Morton) starts his first day back at Global, in the lab that once belonged to his old flame Kim, and scientists are, as usual, working on transuranic elements off-campus without permission. I mean, wouldn’t you?

 While visiting one such naughty scientist, Carter gets bonked on the head by said scientist’s quantum whirligig, then goes home and gets into an argument with Zoë, who is using a virtual therapy device Beverly (Debrah Farentino) left her before vamoosing from town. Now feeling blue, Carter goes on about his day, only to find various citizens vanishing in the occasional blaze of light, and those who are left have no memory of the disappeared. As Eureka shrinks, Carter becomes more and more fearful, as the count spirals down to just Carter … and Zoë.

 Although the quirk factor is still high, this episode delves a little deeper into the heart of our dauntless protagonist. Carter’s unwillingness to talk about his feelings and his desire to keep Zoë with him drives the episode, lending the disappearances an undercurrent of poignancy. While most of the recurring and regular characters make an appearance, this is really Ferguson’s episode, more so than usual, and he does a nice job with it. Like most of the regular cast, Ferguson is an experienced character actor, and he puts that experience to use. Morton, one of those actors who never gets enough work, has a few nice moments of his own, particularly in a late conversation with Carter that has an extra layer of meaning for those who have watched faithfully to date.

If EUREKA follows the path of series like THE X-FILES, this episode would fall into the stand-alone bin, one of those that exist separately from the mythology that will likely span the length of the show. How much of an effect it will have on future storylines is anyone’s guess, but that kind of bifurcated structure worked pretty well for the aforementioned FBI show, and it didn’t have near the charm that EUREKA does (although it had much better villains; why doesn’t William B. Davis get more work, by the way?). At the risk of completely tossing aside any claim of objectivity, EUREKA is the kind of show that you just want to root for, and developing more episodes is a big help in this viewer’s opinion.