Contributor: Gregg Wright
This season has been a little more up and down in quality than I expected it to be, but I still think that the recent hiccups are going to be the exceptions to the rule. “Worse Case Scenario” may be a bit of an average installment, but it’s loaded with the typical “Eureka” fun, and also offers up some satisfying developments in the myth-arc department. The season is still lacking a clear sense of direction, and is mostly concerned with continuing to deal with the fallout from the Matrix incident, but considering the usual length of “Eureka” seasons, we’re still fairly early into this one.
I’ve often said in the past that one of the things that “Eureka” had going for it was its tendency to connect the episodic plot with the character development in thematically meaningful ways. If there was one thing that the previous episode got right, that would be it. The body-swapping kind of made sense as a way of exploring the current sexual confusion and tensions. But this episode’s technological mishap seems rather arbitrarily paired with the current character issues. That’s not to say it’s not entertaining. But I’ve come to expect a bit more “bang for my buck” from “Eureka”.
I was relieved to see that Jo, Carter, and Allison seem to have cleared the air and reconciled. I’d be happy if this were the end of this particular set of issues. And thankfully, Grace seems to be benefiting from her time away. She doesn’t yet seem overly alienated from Henry, so there’s hope that she’ll simply come back before too long. Being that this is the final season, it ought to end with Henry and Grace together. In other news, Holly’s memories and personality seem to be completely intact inside the Matrix, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
The scenes with Fargo returning to what remains of the Matrix and reuniting with Holly are nicely surreal, probably thanks to the odd lack of ambient sound and the dubbing for Fargo and Holly’s voices. It’s been great to see Zane showing a more caring side in his attempts to help Fargo out. I also liked Zane’s take on the question of whether or not the Holly in the Matrix is the real Holly. We’re basically all just highly complex machines to begin with, so the Holly in the Matrix is no less “alive” or “real” for being stored on a different device. The only problem now is getting Holly a synthetic body, which shouldn’t be too difficult, I would think.
I suppose it’s telling that there’s so little about the episode that inspires deeper discussion. I enjoyed the episode, but I must admit, the character development this season hasn’t been quite as interesting as past seasons. Compare the post-Matrix milieu to the Eureka Five struggling to adapt to the new timeline. While the post-Matrix drama seems like it’s being unnecessarily dragged out (with the obvious exception of Fargo’s grief and he and Zane’s attempts to recover Holly), that period of adjustment was rife with potential struggles that felt entirely natural, given the situation. Hopefully the resolution of the Carter/Allison/Jo drama will mean that the show can start moving in a more interesting direction.
Rating: 7/10