Eureka: Best in Faux

Just watched. Immediate reaction: Fun but a bit flat. I'd say about a B/B-, partly depending on how some of what they brought up here plays out in the end.

What worked:
They had Stark & Carter paired up for part of the time which, as I've said before, is always fun.

The eccentric vulcanologist. I would love to see more of him, but like most of the third-string eccentrics, this is probably his only episode. Still, he was fun, and I liked the friendship he and Carter struck up. One of the things I like about Carter is that he is, on the whole, a laid-back and easy-going kind of person--a trait the town definitely needs.

What didn't work: The dog-show-volcano-fake mucus stuff dovetailed a little too neatly too quickly.

The Carter-Allison tension. She's marrying Stark. Enough already with the triangle.

And where's Callie?

Fargo winning the fake dog show with a real dog. Cute, but implausible even for Eureka.

What might work:
The Eva plot. She's Up To Something and it might turn out to be interesting--or not. I still haven't decided what I think of her as a character. She's still too one-dimensional to really like or to believe as a villain. Beverly worked because she was scheming, manipulative, and also a believable town psychiatrist. When she wasn't poisoning people, she actually was counseling them. It also remains to be seen whether or not she's part of the same rather murky and muddled plot Beverly was involved in or if we've got another Mysterious Organization out there pulling strings. I'm inclined to think the first, but the Beverly Plot was never fully explained, so it's too early yet to tell.

Henry and Carter teaming up together to figure out what she's up to. I like Henry coming to tell Carter about the oddity of his errand, but if Eva is any sort of decent schemer, anything like the wizard of organization we're told she is, she'll have some way of keeping tabs on Henry or at least the data he gathered.

Genius Zoe. It's an interesting idea, and I've enjoyed seeing her grow and adjust to her new place and her new role, but--well, it's a delicate balancing act. Can she be Genius Zoe and still be the practical, sort of rebellious but not really character I've grown to love?

The teaser for next week: "For one of these characters, it's the end." Um. We'll see. It all depends on what you mean by "end." It's really a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Personally, I'll be furious if they actually kill off any of the main characters, but I'll also be unhappy if they end up "only merely dead" instead of "really most sincerely dead."