'Eureka's' Mid-Season Finale

Much to my surprise, Eureka continued their altered future storyline rather than sending everyone back to the original timeline. If you watch Eureka, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't watch Eureka, you're missing one heck of a series that's the best of speculative fiction with a sharp sense of humor.

Where Is Eureka?

Eureka, the town created, according to the show's history by Albert Einstein and other scientists, and commissioned by President Harry S. Truman, exists in the Pacific Northwest. The quirky little town is the biggest think tank in the country, doing work to benefit mankind. Unfortunately, most of the time, their work imperils mankind. You know how geniuses create chaos in their quest for turning theory into reality.

No Spoilers

I hate reading about a TV show, movie, or book and having all the fun surprises revealed before I've had a chance to view it or read it myself so I'm not going to go into detail on this mid-season finale in case you DVRd it and haven't had time to watch it yet. Suffice it to say that you can't time travel without changing things in the future, and in the time traveler's own past. As we've heard repeatedly from most science fiction shows and books, the consequences of these changes can be galactic in scale.

I'll Be Seeing You

The name of the mid-season finale is the title of the song Carter (Colin Ferguson) and Allison (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) danced to in the 1947 episode. For this final episode before the break, we get to see the return of another character who created a lot of problems and murdered a few people too. In fact, this season has featured several characters who were able to return to the show, since, of course, the timeline was altered. People who died can be alive again. Neat!

Seeing these characters again, at least some of them, is like seeing an old friend. One can only hope that they make better decisions this time around. I guess we'll just have to wait until January when Eureka resumes again to find out about that and about the threatening cliffhanger which finished off the final seconds of the episode.

For now, Henry (Joe Morton) is wooing his wife, Fargo (Neil Grayston) is still (scarily) in charge, Jo (Erica Cerra) and Zane (Niall Matter) are still apart, and Carter and Allison are together, finally.

Of course, we all know that happy relationships are the kiss of death to television series so Sheriff Carter's happiness probably won't last into the new year when the show resumes. But one can hope.

(Joan Reeves is published in book-length fiction and in periodicals, in print and online all over the web, under her own name, various pseudonyms, and as a ghost.)