Reviews

Review: Eureka — Momstrosity

By  · Published on August 16th, 2010

Synopsis: Thanks to S.A.R.A.H., an emotion-generating program infects all artificial intelligence in Eureka – Deputy Andy falls in love with Jo and “Tiny,” that glitchy robot from earlier this season, chases down Jack, Kevin, Dr. Grant, and Fargo, who are all on a camping trip. Meanwhile, Henry begins to fall in love with Grace and feels obligated to tell her the truth about the Bridge Device.

Review: The beginning of this episode was an unabashed Subaru ad – Tiny rampages behind the guys, their car spins out, cut to close-up of the Subaru logo. It was so insanely blatant that it was hilarious and so bold that I actually kind of admire it. When it comes to product placement, Eureka is a frequent and shameless offender. Although there have been some doozies over the years, my favorite “embedded marketing” moment (not including the one in this episode), happened a couple of seasons ago when Colin Ferguson stepped out of the shower and basically just held a stick of Degree deodorant up to the camera. Product placement is obnoxious but the reality is that TV shows are beholden to their sponsors. In a way, it’s probably better that these “ads” be overt rather than sneaky and subliminal because even when the show’s producers and writers think they’re being sneaky and subliminal, they never are.

Now that that’s out of the way, “Momstrosity” was a solid episode. It followed the show’s basic experiment-goes-wrong-and-threatens-the-lives-of-the-townspeople structure but it also felt like most of the key characters were moving forward and that the overarching story was progressing. Jack finally came clean about his feelings for Allison – a monumental development. Since the beginning of the series, he’s been harboring this love for her and even though those emotions haven’t necessarily been secret, they’d never been articulated so plainly. At the end of the episode, Jack tells Kevin that he’s in love with Allison and then tells Dr. Grant that if he wants Allison, he’s going to have to fight for her.

Jack’s rivalry with Dr. Grant is reminiscent of his rivalry with Nathan Stark. Actually, it isn’t “reminiscent,” it’s exactly the same. And that’s a problem. It’s totally acceptable to delay the inevitable relationship between a will-they-won’t-they couple, but the obstacles impeding the union should be novel. Jack’s confession may have set the stage for a retread of the first two seasons of the show.

Henry, the guy who told the group that they shouldn’t tell anyone about the Bridge Device and their excursion to the 1940s, told someone about the Bridge Device and their excursion to the 1940s. His growing love for Grace, it seems, made it impossible for him to lie to her. The revelation had disastrous results and Henry ended up moving out of the house – but not before implying that he’s going to be spending the rest of the season wooing her. Even though Henry’s confession and the dissolution of his relationship with Grace seemed a little abrupt, it’s probably better that things worked out that way. As happy as I was to see Henry with a woman in his life, the marriage was semi-creepy.

With both Henry and Jack’s feelings out in the open, there will be a romantic bent to the rest of the season, and that’s fine, but it would be nice to see more action relating to the Bridge Device and their time travel journey.

Odds and Ends