Eureka #5.13 “Just Another Day” Series Finale Recap & Review

Syfy’s Eureka ended its five-year run on Monday, an impressive one for a cult sci-fi show that never quite hit a wide level of fame. But it still maintained a very strong, loving fanbase—does the finale provide the closure the show deserves?

Recap:

Eureka is being shut down by the D.O.D. after the events of “Double Take.” Carter feels that it “had to happen eventually,” but Allison is worried where everyone will go. Carter meets with Henry, who’s still worried about Grace’s hearing. Carter inadvertently gives Henry an idea for saving Grace—the one connection he has left, Beverly. Zane and Jo work on packing up Global Dynamics, and discuss where they will go; Jo could be a security chief with Area 51, or she could work on Presidential detail in DC. Zane has an offer to work with the Hadron Collider in Switzerland, or a chair position with MIT. Zane asks Jo what she feels, but says she needs to be practical, causing a clear schism between the two of them.

Meanwhile, Allison gives Holly a clean bill of health, but Holly still can’t remember anything during her time in Eureka, including her intimacy with Fargo. Allison suggests Holly spend time getting to know Eureka again. Fargo is distressed because of his loss of job, girlfriend and home. The DOD arrives, and tells them “the timeline’s changed” and Eureka will be moving out today instead of in six weeks. Fargo decides to take a stand and sit in GD in protest by activating his strongforce amplifier, letting him sit without being moved. Carter drives Zoe to Eureka to have one last goodbye, and Carter seems apprehensive about getting emotional about Eureka, instead counting it as a relief for it to be gone. Suddenly, Carter drives through a wormhole and shows up in GD.

Henry visits Zane to get a hold of the evidence against Grace so he can find out how she and his alternate self used to contact Beverly; Zane manages to retrieve some data for Henry before overloading the transfer system. Henry goes through the footage and discovers a way to contact her. Henry and Beverly meet in a diner, where Beverly gives him the typical “we’re not so different” spiel, but refuses to help; Henry pleads for her to do the right thing, because he knows she cares about the greater good.

Carter, Jo and Andy investigate the wormholes, including checking with Dr. Parrish, who’s on his way to a spa. Instead, he steps through a wormhole, naked, into the Cafe Diem. Allison realizes Parrish was burned by traversing the wormhole—in fact, it was an incision at the molecular level, meaning the wormholes are now intersecting. Andy gets pulled through a wormhole, and pieces of him are spread throughout the city.

After being pressed by Carter, Zane starts searching for anything in Section 5 that would cause the wormholes. He also asks Carter for advice with Jo, who tells him to “talk to her.” Instead of really talking to her, he reverses the “pros and cons” argument on her, which she snaps back with making fun of his “feelings” argument, only making the tension worse. Carter talks to Jo too, and convinces her to keep trying. Fargo calls all of Eureka’s investors to get them to help save it; Zoe becomes inspired and joins the cause.

Carter realizes that Henry is missing, and based on Zane’s body language, determines he has something to do with it. Zane confesses that pulled data out of the quantum teleportation datastream—and Jo notes that the stabilizer was the first thing on the truck out to move, meaning it could be causing the wormholes. However, now that the wormholes are intersecting, there’s no way they could be stabilized. Instead, they decide to align the wormholes enough to get them to collapse in on themselves.

As they work on the solution, Jo reveals she wants Zane to do whatever makes her happy, and Zane only wants to do it with her. After seeing Fargo struggle to save Eureka, Holly remembers that she’s still in love with him, and they kiss. Allison realizes the wormholes are not imploding, and in fact the singular aligned one is growing even stronger, building to a level that could destroy Eureka. Carter comes up with using Fargo’s strongforce amplifier to stabilize the wormhole; however, it only works if it’s attached to a person. Carter of course volunteers, but Allison doesn’t want him to do it. Confronted with the emotional situation, Carter finally reveals his feelings about Eureka—it’s their home, and he has to save it. He jumps into the wormhole, and his life in Eureka flashes before his eyes, as he sees a montage of clips from the past five years. He emerges outside in the middle of the town, the wormhole now stabilized.

Holly has been chosen to lead a new secret project for DARPA with a team of her choice, and she chooses Fargo to come with her. Fargo receives a phonecall—Eureka has been sold, meaning they’ve lost it for good. Henry comforts Carter by telling him he saved the people, so wherever they go, they’re his legacy. Grace is released and reunites with Henry; an anonymous tip was apparently placed with information about Senator Wynn in exchange for Grace’s release, presumably Beverly finally doing the right thing. Andy brings Zane to the prison, where Jo proposes to him, going with what she feels.

Carter, Henry, Allison and Grace are given wine from 1947—and Trevor Grant arrives, now calling himself Trent Rockwell. He reveals he’s the one Fargo called, and Grant bought Eureka, being one of the town’s founders. Grant chooses Henry to run Global Dynamics. After celebrating, Jack tells Allison that there’s no place he’d rather be, and Allison tells him she’s pregnant with his baby.

After a montage showing the characters spending time together, Jack goes to drive Zoe back to the airport. They pass a car with the younger versions of them from the pilot episode, mirroring a scene in the pilot, and Carter says, “I’ll deal with that tomorrow.”

Review:

Eureka is often overlooked in the grand scheme of genre television. It was never particularly groundbreaking, and aside from some enlightened ideas now and then (the season 4 timeline shift, for example) for the most part it’s always remained relatively safe. The finale follows in line with this, sticking to a typical story (reflected in the “Just Another Day” title) and presenting a slew of common series finale tropes—returning characters, a clip montage, characters leaving to new places, full-circle pilot references, etc. But it works, because Eureka never set out to be thought-provoking or revolutionary, it set out to be fun, clever, quirky and heartwarming. And the finale was exactly that.

The writers made a smart decision by not getting too complicated here. The story goes, they were originally intending to have a six-episode final season, only to have Syfy cancel them after season 5. They were able to score one final episode to wrap up the cliffhanger in “Double Take,” but only had a few days to break it. It seems they focused on the right things, though—no big, epic story so much as neat resolutions to big dangling threads, and more importantly, plenty of fun, humor, and fuzzy character moments.

While the simplistic plot was forgivable, the dialogue was a bit hit-or-miss. Most of Carter’s one-liners were hilarious (“Wormholes are bad…what did you do?!”) But then there were some odd ones—I still don’t understand why Jo called Andy’s arm sticking out of a wormhole “disturbing,” and the gag with Jo being mistaken for a guy was an odd and overdone one to throw into the final episode. For comedy in general, though, the finale hit the mark, and supporting characters like Andy and Vincent had a slew of laugh-out-loud moments.

And even with this outing being primarily comedy heavy, there were a number of emotional moments that were sold really well, particularly for Jack and Allison. Salli Richardson-Whitfield shined in what could have been a forced dramatic scene when she pleaded to Carter in front of the wormhole. But the most surprising moment of the episode was Jack’s reaction to Allison’s pregnancy: “Just a little déjà vu,” in reference to his pre-Eureka life with his late wife. Colin Ferguson sells this incredibly subtle-yet-profound moment beautifully, and was the best full-circle character moment in the episode. It was quick and small, but it was very beautiful and quite the tearjerker for anyone who’s followed his story.

Some of the most fun parts of the episode were the very meta jabs at the show’s situation—Eureka’s six-weeks to “shut down” being cut to one day all because of a “budget issue” is a not-so-subtle reference to what the network did to them—but surprisingly, it wasn’t all that mean or aggressive, for the most part. It still works in the show’s context, and getting “sold” to another owner could reflect the show being picked up by another network, if that was a possibility.

It was also quite inspired to have Holly’s memory loss allow her to become commentary on the show instead of squeezing out drama (a la Chuck‘s finale.) Sure, it was heavy-handed at times (“Wormholes, cyborgs, endless possibility…no wonder you guys love this place.”) But it was all done with a big heart, it seems, not so much self-indulging in its own awesomeness, but instead telling fans, “Yeah, we loved it as much as you do.” Even without being a big fan, it’s easy to see that a lot of love went into it from all ends, and it’s one reason why the show is so enjoyable even when it’s not doing anything all that new.

This wasn’t a “big” finale by any means, and there was nothing too terribly surprising here. It was simply a fun send-off to the characters viewers have grown to love. And even with an incredibly simple main plot, there was quite a lot packed into the episode, giving each major character their own thread to follow to give them closure. There were happy endings all around, relationships we’d been rooting for came together, and everything worked out nicely. And in the current realm of gritty realism outlining most of our media, it’s nice to get that warm, fuzzy feeling sometimes while still having lots of fun and exploring exciting genre concepts. Eureka did that in spades, and wins in its final outing because of it.

Some stray tidbits:

• I was mostly a casual viewer of the show, but ever since I saw the first episode I wondered what was with Carter and Zoe seeing themselves driving down the highway. So when they revisited that in the final scene, I literally squealed with glee. If anything, this show knew how to appease every fan, hardcore or not.
• Seeing Zoe, Taggart, Grant, and even Beverly back and contributing to the story was great, and even Nathan Stark was featured prominently in the clip montage.
• Did all the wormhole traversing and Carter’s big fall out of the vortex remind anyone else of Sliders?
• Parrish’s passes at Holly and her disguist at all of them were hilarious. Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day work really well together, and it was very cool we got to see so much of them in these last couple of seasons.
• It seems fitting that the final time the Jeep is destroyed, it’s slowly disassembled piece-by-piece.
• Vince’s “Fantastic!” reaction to a naked Parrish might just be Chris Gauthier’s finest moment.
• Best blink-and-you’ll-miss moment: Fargo looking down at his crotch when Carter yells, “Fargo, you have to put your thing in the hole before it blows!”
• “I remember getting wormholed…by Dr. Fargo…and I liked it!”
• “You guys are smart, but the Sherriff is the strongforce. He holds it all together.”

For interviews with the cast and crew on the finale, check out KSiteTV’s coverage of last weekend’s Paley Center event!