I Have Found It

I wrote a quick blurb a while back mentioning the summer cable show “Psych” which, after watching almost the entire first season, I realized was more clever in premise than execution. After about four or five episodes it was already getting a bit stale. Dr. Mac was reminded upon that mention of another summer cable series, Eureka and pointed out that it too showed promise.

I had actually already been watching Eureka but unlike Psych it didn’t strike me right off the bat as being as good. Now I think this has more to do with the premises of the respective shows and while Psych failed in a lot of ways to live up to its initial potential, Eureka has managed to suck me in with some engaging characters and—I’m not too proud to admit it—a healthy dose of itch-scratching in that X-Files/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Lost region of soap-opera-y science fiction serials.

But there are things about Eureka that I’m not too sure about. Before I get to that, let me list what I do like about the show.

1. Colin Ferguson. The casting for the lead role is exactly perfect: Jack Carter pulls off smarmy, smart but in a different way than most of the eggheads in Eureka, charismatic but not hammy and he swings easily between the shows varying thematic twists (see below).
2. Jo (Erica Cerra). Despite being criminally under-utilized, the Jo character is one of the most appealing on the show and Cerra nails the deadpan by-the-book deputy perfectly and manages to steal most scenes she’s in.
3. Henry (Joe Morton). Joe Morton has been good for a long time, despite never really achieving a big star status (probably because he always gets cast as the doctor, the scientist or the clever FBI agent instead of getting the lead) but he’s perfectly suited to being the town’s mechanic/coroner/tow truck driver/etc and also Jack’s (smarter) sidekick.
4. The humor. When the show is in comedy mode, it’s usually pretty spot-on. Some good recurring jokes are Jack’s AI house (S.A.R.A.H.), Henry’s velcro job title coveralls, the quirky romantic tension between Jack and Allison and Jo’s insistence on following official police procedure (the “over” bit in the most recent “Right as Raynes” episode had me actually laughing out loud).

But of course I have complaints. First of all, the show is crazy inconsistent, even within the confines of an individual episode. In fact, if it were at least steadfast within a given episode, I could certainly forgive (and in fact would probably even enjoy) some disparity week to week. Take X-Files as an example, some of the best episodes are the ones that break from the norm (“Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space'”—best ever) but at least within the episodes themselves the levity was always contextual and never felt like “the slapstick scene” or whatever. Eureka seems to set each episode up with rapid-fire quips and jokes and then Something Serious happens and the jokes evaporate and we enter full-on Drama Mode until the Sinister Stuff gets introduced and then it’s Spooky Time until the resolution (often Action Theater) at which point we go back to the Funny for the episode’s epilogue.

The problem isn’t that the show tries to be entertaining on several levels, it’s that the execution is often clumsy which results in the show feeling uneven and a bit like it’s trying too hard. In essence the tone of the show is never set: Is it supposed to be lighthearted with a sinister undertone? Sinister with a hint of humor? Dramedy? Soap-y? It’s kind of all of them at various times and it’s that lack of focus that really hurts the show the most.

Perhaps as a by-product, character interactions suffer from inconsistency. The competitive tension between Jack and Nathan is forced a lot, the townspeople’s reactions to Jack in general seem to be arbitrary depending on what the current scene demands. Most specifically, the part of the show that doesn’t work is Jack and his daughter Zoe’s strained relationship. Somehow the ever-in-peril Zoe is smart enough to go toe-to-toe with whip-smart Dad in their verbal battles but is stupid enough to constantly be in need of rescue at the last possible second.

Granted, the same complaints could be leveled at other shows (even X-Files relied on Scully getting into situations where she needed to be rescued by Mulder about once per episode in the early seasons) but here the clichés feel even more egregious because you can tell this show wants to escape the traps of standard serial fiction but it seems comelled toward them for some reason… almost like it were one of Eureka’s wayward inventions pulling the plot toward trite convention instead of confidently running with the quirky and the bizarre. It’s a lack of committment to the show’s overall premise that worries me the most.

I’m certainly in it for the rest of this season, but I’m hoping it only takes a year to iron out some of the kinks because the potential is there, it’s just a matter of executing and so far close isn’t cutting it.

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