By Brandon Nolta

Some years ago, I worked in tech support with a guy who was well-respected within the company as a capable technician, despite his not being terribly interested in computers or geek culture. When asked about his success in the field, he said that because he wasn’t all that experienced or tech-oriented, he always stuck with the basics of troubleshooting, and often ended up solving more issues than the techs who lived and breathed computers. The lesson here seems pretty straightforward, and it’s one that Sheriff Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson) and the rest of Eureka get a taste of this week.

Much to Carter’s dismay, there’s a new scientist in town, a young punk named Zane whose felony record is almost as impressive as his scientific accomplishments. Zane’s arrival in town coincides with an ambitious experiment to recreate the Big Bang in a controlled laboratory environment. Considering the past track record of other experiments, this would seem to be a tremendously bad idea, but progress often flies in the face of common sense, right?

Anyway, Stark (Ed Quinn) and Henry (Joe Morton) fire up the machine and get things rolling, only to fall afoul of a mysterious drop in neurotransmitters that gives the usual brain trust the collective IQ of a drunken fraternity. To make things even more exciting, nobody at Global Dynamics has ever read Heinlein, who famously said, “Specialization is for insects.” As a result, Carter finds himself surrounded by people who are highly intelligent but unable to break out of the boundaries of their disciplines.


What makes the episode work beyond the tried-and-true theme of reversing positions is not that Carter ends up top of the smart heap for once, but that he comes to understand how much he has come to rely on a level of intelligence that is unheard of in reality. The situation with the singularity experiment is not only out of Carter’s depth, but all he has in the way of resources are his own native wits and his ability to cut to the heart of a matter. Ferguson does a pretty solid job of showing us a man who is forced to tap-dance through problems he barely understands, and is able to keep a relatively level head even while forcing back panic.


Nobody else is particularly required to do any dramatic lifting, although Morton gets a brief moment toward the end; most of the cast gets to goof off this episode, and they grab their chance with relish. It’s a fun standalone episode, although Henry lets slip a piece of information that Carter will be able to use in future episodes to further the mythology. Moreover, for the fans of the shapely Deputy Lupo (Erica Cerra), there’s a little plot development that hints that a shipment of lingerie may feature in a future episode. Mind you, I can promise nothing in this regard, but such a shipment did appear, and I would bet the writers of EUREKA follow Chekhov’s assertion that if a gun appears in Act I, it needs to be fired by Act III. Just a little something for some fans to look forward to. Your mileage may vary.