Eureka: Best in Faux (Episode 303)

Welcome back to Eure-caps!  Tonight’s episode was all over the place, so let’s dive right in.  Carter is turning up the pressure on Zoe to take an advanced physics class – one can only imagine what that’s like in this town.  But everyone else is looking to play.  Turns out the people of Eureka are dog lovers.  The town is going nuts over their upcoming dog show…well, sort of.  These pups are bio-manetic.  Robot dogs.  Jo thinks they’d make for cool weapons.  Of course she does.  Allison and Nathan are talking wedding plans in Diem, and it turns out Jo likes weddings!  She says she’ll go dress shopping with Allison.  The Sheriff gets a page – possible break-in. 

On his way out the door, the scientist who grew brainless chickens and make the town stupid last season (her name escapes both me and IMDB) introduces Fifi, two time winning and reigning robo-pup champ.  Enter Dr. Young, also from last season (she was the sex expert doc when the women of town were hopelessly turned on to Carter).  She and Doc Chicken exchange nastiness and all of a sudden, Fifi explodes…and her head falls off!  

At Henry’s lab, the good Dr. Deacon is back in his coveralls!  Thorne enters and asks him to take care of a “task.”  Special thanks to “Eric” for pointing out that last week’s final scene showed the film canister was from 1938.  Clearly she’s up to no good.  The cops show up at Dr. Mendel’s place (the attempted break in).  He thinks the dog show participants would break in to steal his synthetic mucous (to make their dogs more realistic, naturally).  He mixes up a batch of volatile chemicals and a cool green goop rises from the beakers!  He and Jo leave and then the weirdness kicks in – there’s a strange glowing light, an earthquake, and the super-mucous explodes all over Carter!  So gross, so cool. 

Carter’s a mess.  Good thing the mucous isn’t toxic.  Oh, and no one else felt an earthquake, even though they were in the next room.  Turns out an earthquake cannot happen in Eureka – it’s the most stable place on Earth.  Yeah right!  These people are growing mucous and building dogs!  Thorne is more interested in having Carter investigate Fifi the Wonderdog because these dogs are cash machines.  Aside from being adorable (and marketable), the dogs have lead to major breakthroughs, such as artificial skin and compounds to increase soldiers’ sense of smell in order to detect explosives.  Wow.  Was it sabotage?  Probably.  But Nathan needs Carter in private. 

Finally, we get to the brains of the operation...almost literally.  Eureka’s central computer is more powerful than every computer built in the last 30 years combined!  Introduce Dr. Fox, and what a fox she is.  She manages the computer’s cores – super powerful, super fast logic diamonds.  Oh, and Nathan is giving Allison one of these as a wedding present (Carter has to sign for it, that’s why he’s there).  Carter is still stuck on the quake, so Fargo suggests he see Dr. Hood. 

Dr. Hood is a disgraced seismologist (played by Ferris Bueller’s Cameron, Alan Ruck!)  According to his map, there was no earthquake.  Carter mentions that he saw the “Northern Lights” and that piques Hood’s attention.  He checks his map again and this time, there are a few potential “hot spots”.  Very interesting.  Back in town, Jo assures Carter yet again that Eureka is quake proof.  Until the ground starts to shake.  And a huge spaceship emerges!  Ok, it’s really Dr. Hood’s underground tunneler that’s torn up most of Main Street.  Turns out there is something big under the town and it’s going to blow!

Allison is furious at Hood for wrecking the street.  However, there is explanation for the Northern Lights – something about electro-magnetic energy creating light.  Ok, smarty-pants, what’s that mean?  It means there’s a volcano about to erupt under the city.  This worries Carter, but not Allison.  Five years ago, Hood predicted that a 9.5 earthquake would hit Memphis and it did not, causing him to snap. 

At Diem, Henry is tutoring Zoe on railwave dynamics.  Using a small device, he’s able to melt metal with a focused soundwave – an acoustic energy wave.  Zoe’s baffled by it.  Henry tells Carter he’s been avoiding a “troubling errand”, meaning Thorne.  All of a sudden, Hood starts drilling in the center of Diem.  He thinks that there’s a pocket of magma (underground liquid rock) and this is the best spot to drill.  No go.  Carter stops him and sends him home, taking his havoc-inducing tunneler with him. 

Thorne and Henry meet up at an isolated location near the woods.  She tells him that this spot is to be the construction site for a hotel, so that potential investors have a place to crash. Thorne asks that Henry scan the area for any radiation – according to a 70-year-old map, this might be a radioactive hotspot.  Henry happily obliges. 

Play Dead!

In town, Dr. Young denies tampering with Fifi, and instead decides to show off her dog.  Carter throws a Frisbee, and Young’s dog bursts into flames.  Wow.  Carter rounds up Fargo for a “dog-topsy.”  At the sheriff’s office, Jo is making Allison try on wedding dresses.  She enters wearing an enormous dress that makes her look like a wedding cake.  Good thing the seamstress has her remote control, and has the dress automatically conform to her body shape, making it look more presentable.  For a better idea of what that means, it’s just like in Back to the Future II when Marty’s jacket automatically adjusts to the right size.  As we’ll soon see, Allison’s dress might be from 2015 as well, as it features “power laces.”  Far out.  Just then, big old earthquake.  Naturally, it shorts out the circuits in Allison’s dress.  She is pissed – she thinks Hood has been tunneling again.  Nope, this time, it was for real.  Hood was busy tracking an “event” that’s about 30 seconds away.  Carter arrives on the scene, and tells Allison she looks pretty.  It’s hilariously awkward watching her in the middle of a field wearing a wedding dress.  Well, not as hilarious as when the ground erupts thanks to a fumeral eruption – a mud volcano.  Allison gets nailed. 

The Bridal Shower

Now the G.D. team is on-site and Hood takes control.  Nathan teases Allison about her muddy dress.  They throw back a lot of science terms that neither Carter nor myself can keep up with, and when he asks, Nathan says it was nothing, but they like to sound smart.  Good one, guys.  Hood reports that there is definitely pressurized magma underneath them.  Allison and Nathan think that Hood may have caused this in an attempt to regain his good name.  Then, Fargo calls. 

At the G.D. lab, he’s taken apart the broken dogs.  Looks as if the owners were juicing.  The dogs’ circuit boards are being powered by small logic diamonds!  Federal law regulates them and no one should be allowed to have them.  Off to see Dr. Fox.  Fox says that they aren’t from her lab because all of their diamonds are coded – these were not.  Someone else is making logic diamonds. 

In her office, Allison is attempting to cut off her dress because she’s stuck.  Have no fear, Carter is here. Allison says she should have trusted Carter about the quakes.  He manages to undo the power laces and there’s a lot of sexual tension. There is a painfully long look shared between them.  It’s so good, it puts some awkward pauses from The Office to shame.  Damn.  Anyway, the magma could be man-made.  Off to see Hood. 

Thorne is at Henry’s lab.  He’s finished analyzing the plot of land, and as it turns out, there’s a lot of radiation, but every kind you could imagine, from X-rays to gamma.  Thorne says it would cost too much to clean up the land so the hotel would have to be built elsewhere.  She asks that this be kept between the two of them, and Henry says he’s good at keeping secrets. 

Carter arrives at Hood’s base camp and accuses…er, questions whether or not Hood made this happen.  Hood isn’t stupid, and promises him he’d never do anything so stupid.  But he does offer to help – one of his machines and determine exactly where the illegal logic diamonds were mined – they have a unique molecular structure, like a “really expensive snowflake.”  The carbon signature says it’s from Eureka!  But there’s no diamond mine there, just an old coal mine.  Hmm, lots of talk about heat and pressure, I wonder where this is going.  Underground, there is a lot of coal.  Oh, and huge, raw diamonds.  Hood can tell just by looking that these are not natural.  “Someone’s cooking diamonds.”  Next thing you know, a blast shoots out, pinning Hood to the wall!

Carter cuts the power to the machine that caused the blast.  Hood is ok, but his arm is hurt.  Turns out there’s a giant acoustic wave generator being aimed at the coal.  All of that heat is not only making diamonds, but it’s also melting the earth and turning it into magma.  That’s really bad.  At G.D., Allison says that only 6 people in the world can make logic diamonds, and the US is the only country in the world that has them – they’re about 30 years ahead of the rest of the world.  Dr. Fox has some explaining to do.  Yeah, she’s been cooking diamonds.  She thinks that it isn’t fair that the government wants to use the diamonds for weapons, but Allison assures her that G.D. isn’t a weapons facility, it’s a lab.  Fox wanted to test her diamonds, and it turns out putting them in the artificial dogs was really the best way to do it, they just happened to overheat and cause them to blow up. 

Now even though the wave generator has been turned off, there’s still a lot of seismic activity under Eureka.  Carter suggests drilling to relieve the pressure, but it won’t work.  Plus, there’s no telling when it will erupt so they can’t evacuate the city.  The only thing that could work would be to create an underground conduit to the lake, but even they don’t have a gizmo to hunt lava.  Carter has a “stupid idea” that ends up being brilliant.  Dr. Mendel’s super mucous + Fifi the Wonderpup + a supercharged version of the bomb detecting compound used by soldiers = Fifi the Magma Bloodhound!

Carter, Nathan, and Fifi load up into Dr. Hood’s tunneler and head underground.  Fifi is sniffing for magma (it’s lava when it’s above ground, Carter!), and the boys have explosives ready to create the tunnel.  Fifi finally gets a scent and they exit the tunneler.  Magma is just about to pour out through the walls, so there’s no time to set explosives – the magma will rush out at about 80 feet per second!  Everyone back in the ship!  The wall bursts and the tunneler goes flying through the earth, the lava hot on its tail.  If they could escape to the lake, then all would end happily ever after.  But of course, the equipment is malfunctioning.  Carter suggests that Nathan smack it, and sure enough, it works.  They find their bearings and lava shoots out across the lake.  The day is saved.  Standing in front of the terrifying light show, Carter asks Nathan, “So what do you want to do tomorrow?”  Nice. 

Back at Diem, Fargo’s pup won best in show!  But looks like he’s a dirty cheater – his dog Sparky pees on Carter’s leg, and robot dogs don’t pee.  Ooh, Fargo.  Allison says that Carter and Nathan make a good team, and truth be told, she’s right.  And they can’t stand that!  

Henry meets up with Carter at his office.  Carter asks about Henry’s “troubling errand”, assuming it has to do with Thorne.  Yeah, he’s right.  Henry spills the beans.  He tells Carter about Thorne’s request, but that he didn’t tell her that the radiation he found there was bariogenic radiation.  It turns out that it had only been a theory of Henry’s, but today he essentially discovered it, if only a trace.  Carter is very happy Henry told him, and Henry assures him that he doesn’t keep secrets from his friends…anymore.  Good man. 

The episode ends with S.A.R.A.H. harassing Carter, and Carter and Zoe having a nice father/daughter moment where he eases up on the pressure he’s been giving her.  Aww.  That’s all nice and good, but from the look of it, next week’s episode is where my attention is.  From the promo, we’re told that “everything will change forever”, and I’m lead to believe that one main character may die!  Can’t wait!  Until next time!