By Brandon Nolta

If you’re Sheriff Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson), and your phlegmatic, ex-Special Forces deputy Jo (Erica Cerra) shows up in battle armor and tells you that the science fair is the most dangerous day of the year in Eureka, wouldn’t you be inclined to believe her? Far as I’m concerned, that’s right up there with four dudes on horseback pounding across the sky. Fortunately, questions like the ramifications of what happens when you combine genius intellects, high technology and poor impulse control quickly get shelved for a more pressing problem: space debris.

Go ahead and laugh, but ponder for a moment the issue of metal chunks the size of your fist whizzing around at 17,000 miles an hour. Now imagine those chunks falling out of the sky, impacting the earth’s surface at random. Anyway, Carter and the merry folks of Eureka quickly discover that a big cloud of space junk is coalescing above Eureka, which as you might guess, is bad news. Meanwhile, Zoë (Jordan Hinson) is having her own issues, being picked on by a clique of snotty super-genius girls and being mocked for her father’s subgenius IQ, which he rashly revealed in the first few minutes of the episode. (It’s 111, which should give you an idea of how snotty these kids are, since 111 actually falls into the superior intelligence category. You’d think this would be self-evident, since he regularly exhibits more direct thinking and common sense than anybody else on the damn show, but never mind.)

So, we have the trials and tribulations of high school, plus the workday travails of working with people with lots of funding and way more mental horsepower than prudence in using it. Does this sound like fun, or what? Actually, it is, because like all good stories, this episode is about more than just the surface plot. The question of how well the Carters fit into the Eureka dynamic is addressed, with not entirely unexpected results, but what’s more subtly touched on is the issue of self-esteem.

Carter is a man of superior intelligence in the real world, but Eureka is entirely on the high side of the bell curve, so he finds himself very much an outsider, even more so than his job would normally make him. Most of the time, Ferguson plays his role as if Carter is unaware of this discrepancy, but he makes some choices this time around that cast doubt on this interpretation. Hinson gets to play a similar change on this, except from a different direction; her character actually fits into the high-IQ society (hers is revealed at episode end to be 157), but she has never thought of herself this way. How each of the Carters incorporates this into their daily behavior makes for an interesting, and welcome, subtext to the episode. As an additional bonus, Eureka’s veterinarian and cryptozoologist Taggart (Matt Frewer) makes a welcome return, playing things a little more subdued than usual but still nuttier than squirrel poop.

Of course, all this waxing rhapsodic about the themes and characters should be unnecessary, because EUREKA fans should have been hooked at “space debris.” Despite the shading, this episode mainly focuses on the fun side of the show, and as usual, EUREKA succeeds in bringing a smile to this reviewer’s face. Now, if only somebody got around to admitting Carter’s smarter than anyone gives him credit for …