Eureka: God Is In The Details (Episode 210)

I think whoever casts Eureka must be getting a kickback from the Stargate franchise. Tonight's crossover guest is Teryl Rothery, who played Dr. Janet Fraiser, a level-headed, compassionate physician, on SG:1. I wonder if Rothery committed to the role before learning she'd be a church organist/acoustic engineer/grieving widow with a swarm of bioluminescent fireflies hovering overhead. Maybe she missed being busy. Maybe she needs a new agent. Or maybe after however many seasons on SG:1, she just threw her hands up and said, "I've seen weirder shit than this. Bring it on."

"GOD'S COME TO EUREKA" -- Um, you might want to take my paragraph header with a grain of salt, since it comes from the mouth of Larry The Asskisser, but it illustrates how even the most literal of thinkers can be swayed by the appearance of the miraculous. We open at the First Church of Eureka, where Reverend Harper's delivering what must be a pretty typical Eureka sermon -- "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind" -- to a very sparsely populated church. Lupo, Allison and Kevin, and Henry are among the gathered few. Meanwhile, at the sheriff's office, Carter's worshipping at the Church of Baseball with a communion wafer of pepperoni pizza, when Zoe comes in bearing a newspaper, a healthy breakfast, and a box of goods to donate to the church. He's suspicious of her motives, and sure enough, she asks if she can get a tattoo. Carter and I both raise our eyebrows at her and say, "NO!" in unison. Carter takes the box of goods to the church. After chatting with Diane Lancaster, the church organist, and with the good reverend herself, he pulls out the book of sonnets that holds such significance to him, Henry, and Allison, and suddenly has a flash of Henry raging that he blames Jack for Kim's death. I kept waiting throughout the episode for an explanation, but no, they  just leave it hanging out there, a sudden and unexplained flashback. I hate it when that happens. My spouse said, "I think they forgot to film a few episodes." At this point, I think that's as good an explanation as any.

Zoe and her friends are sitting at home, gabbing, when they're all suddenly struck mute -- just the first of several incidents that lead Carter, Lupo, Fuzzy, Henry, and the collective brain power of GD on a wild goose chase. When Zoe bends over to pick something up, Carter sees that she has one of those tail-finder tats, a rose with some scrollwork, positioned just above her ass. You can tell it bugs the bejeezus out of him, but he manages to put it in perspective, and compared to losing her voice, it's pretty low on the shitstorm scale.

Allison's the next to succumb: while taking a shower at home, she suddenly starts to glow, and passes out. She wakes at the GD medical facility, with, as Fuzzy puts it, her inner glow becoming her outer glow. "Holy crap," is Carter's response when he sees her, before turning to Fuzzy and saying, "What did you do?" Hee. Fuzzy says Allison's skin cells are oxidizing or something, and, worse, the bioluminescence is working as a neurotoxin, and if they can't find a nerve agent antidote to give her within twelve hours, she'll die. *yawn* Oh, come on. I don't believe for a minute that they're going to kill off Allison. It's the-boy-who-cried-wolf season on Eureka. Every freakin' week finds some leading character, or the whole town, in mortal peril. I wonder how anything ever gets done in Eureka when they seem to spend their entire lives responding to this minute's crisis.

The biolum clue leads Carter to another one of those unofficial offsite labs GD is so fond of. A man who looks like Robin Hood's big burly friend Little John is running a bioluminescence lab. I guess I'm supposed to recognize him? Seth? Carter torched his lab last season? None of it's ringing any bells, but I'm going to give them a point for apparent continuity and blame it on the late hour and my faulty memory. Seth's working on a project that he dumbs down for me Carter: "I mate plants and fish and make them glow." Okay. I understand what he's doing, but I never did figure out why he's doing it. The water in his aquarium turns to blood, which I'll admit is freaky, and it's right about then that people start thinking these are all apocalyptic signs -- the mute girls are like the Tower of Babel, Allison's glow is like the transfiguration of a saint, and the water turning to blood is some end of the world thing. And why do they think that? Well, the good reverend's filling their minds (and her pews) with her 'miracle of science' malarkey.

More relevant than the religious overtones is the fact that at each 'crime scene' -- Carter's house, Allison's bathroom, and Seth's aquarium -- there are perfect round holes left in ultra-hard crystalline glass from pressure built from the inside out. Explain those and you'll have your answer, Carter. But in the meantime, the sky continues to fall, as power goes out all over Eureka, and more and more citizens gravitate toward the church for reassurance and comfort. Little John's there handing out biolum flashlights, and a radio is piping in music. Carter decides they need to look for the person who has the most to gain from the recent events and decides it's the minister. Despite protests from church-goers Henry and Lupo, Carter approaches Reverend Harper and asks her a few questions. It turns out before she was a minister, she was a theoretical physicist, aka a big fat red herring. She says, "I wasn't much of a scientist, but I'm a good minister."

While Fuzzy gets more and more frustrated at failing to find a scientific cure for Allison, Henry tests the crystal radio system from the church and finds that it can emit radio waves at ultra-high frequencies. In addition to driving all the dogs in Eureka insane, it also gets to a pitch high enough to burn those holes in crystalline glass that they've found at each crime scene. Ding ding! We have a winner! Henry also says that the ultrasonic frequencies can explain away all of the incidents, including the mute teenagers, since it could be putting pressure on the vocal cords, and can create the bioluminescence. It doesn't explain Carter's sonnet flashback, however. Maybe I just need to have a little faith? The radio system leads them to Diane Lancaster, the church organist...and also the former head of "acoustic engineering" at Global Dynamics. How convenient! Oh, and her husband Daniel died recently, leaving her bereft. (By the way, what's with the umpteen Stargate references? Jack? Carter? Daniel? Sam will be next, just you watch. If they manage to organically throw in a Teal'c reference I'll send them a fruit basket.)

It all adds up to one guilty organist practicing the black art of radio waves in her basement. Henry, Lupo, and Carter find Diane with her big crystal thingy all revved up and ready to go. She says, "I found where everything meets." She uses bible verses to support her scientific theory, saying she's created a portal to Heaven. Henry, as you can imagine, is intrigued, to put it mildly. Slobbering with anticipation and obsessive desire would be another way to put it. He thinks it's a temporal rift and wants to use it to find Kim, and is extremely reluctant to give up on what might be a gate to the multiverse. Carter manages to talk Diane into giving up on her idea of joining Daniel in the afterlife (I don't mean to be crass, but aren't there easier ways to commit suicide than this crystal radio high frequency glowing firefly thing?). He pulls the "Is this what Daniel would want" card. "I just want to be with him again," Diane says. "You will," Carter assures her. "You just have to have a little faith." Um, I think a little too much faith is what got her into this pickle in the first place, Carter.

Meanwhile, back at GD, Fuzzy has brought Kevin to his dying mother's side, where he lays his hands above her body and "cures" her, at the same moment Carter's turning off the radio over in Diane's basement. Fuzzy's convinced that Kevin is evolving and now controls power of the Akashic field, and says that is what saved Allison's life. Wow, Fuzzy's really starting to lose it, isn't he?

Reverend Harper is delighted to see a full house come Sunday morning. Nothing like scaring people to get them to come to church! Works for the Baptists! (Don't e-mail me, I grew up in the Bible Belt; I know some pretty scary Baptists). After church, Henry offers Diane comfort, sympathizing with her loss. I liked seeing that; it reminds me how much I loved Henry last season. Carter gives Henry back the book of sonnets, asking him about it, but Henry pleads ignorance. Jack reminds him that Henry is his best friend. It's just...weird... because the way they're acting with each other, it's almost like Henry's the one who had his memory wiped and Jack's the one who knows what's going on, when we know the opposite is true. I guess they're building toward some big revelation scene? I sure hope so!

As Carter and Zoe leave the church yard, Zoe fesses up that the tail-finder tat was a temporary one, and asks if she can get a real one. "Yeah," Carter says, "when Hell freezes over." That girl needs a tattoo like Lupo needs time on the shooting range.

"HE'S BRILLIANT, I'M NOT. STORY OF MY LIFE IN THIS TOWN" -- The Baldwin's back, and he's pursuing Lupo with the kind of single-minded intensity he used to reserve for credit card fraud and lock picking. At first I was pretty excited about this little subplot -- I love Lupo to death, and the Baldwin seems like a good foil for her. They have an actual date at Cafe Diem after church, while she's still out of uniform in her Sunday best -- loose hair! tight bodice! knees covered! I hardly recognized her! -- and they start to compare their respective obsessions. His is "mind candy," hers is "practical applications" -- particle physics versus gun assembly, brains versus brawn. It doesn't take long for Lupo to get insecure about her lack of cerebral smarts and take a hike. The Baldwin is uncowed, though, and after getting her to fess up to her insecurity by threatening to hold his breath until he passes out, he steps up, showing up outside the church at the end of the episode, and she gives a cute little smile that lets us know she's willing to give it another go. Ahem. I much prefer my Lupo kicking ass and taking names, even if that means keeping her uniform pressed and her hair in a nice tight ponytail. I'll take that any day over simpering and feelings of inadequacy from the top sniper in the history of special forces. Between the stupid Zorro fantasy, this whole 'pretty chicks feel dumb' crap tonight, and Allison's unfortunate and continued slide into the Little Bo-Peep side of wardrobe, I'm getting some unpleasant vibes off this season's attitudes towards women. Add it to my ever-multiplying List of Discontent.

Romance Round-Up

Lupo & the Baldwin -- Looking rosy!

Allison & Stark -- Positively glowing!

Zoe & a permanent tattoo -- Unlikely in the extreme