TV Guide: Eureka

Do you ever find yourself ...

TV Guide — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Question: Do you ever find yourself getting sick of "shock-ending" season finales? I bring this up because I just finished watching the "mid-season finale" of one of my favorite shows, Sci Fi's Eureka. (Spoiler alert.) In the last minutes of the episode, Sheriff Carter is fired. To me, this seems pointless. We all know Carter isn't going to stay fired. Moreover, no one who wasn't already tuning in is going to come back specifically to see if Carter is actually fired, so the whole thing doesn't even achieve the desired result. What it does do is make me dread the season opener where we have to sit through at least one episode wasted on the characters extracting themselves from a situation that was obviously created for nothing more than shock value. (I guess you have to give kudos to House for being the one show to actually follow through with this sort of thing, but being that it ended in disaster I'd almost say it validates my point more.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not against ...

I watched Fringe last ...

TV Guide — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Question: I watched Fringe last Tuesday, and when it was over, I flipped channels to catch the end of Eureka. Having seen the two shows pretty much side by side, I can't help thinking that part of the reason I like Eureka so much is that the people of Eureka manage to save the world on a regular basis without being quite as grim about it as characters in other worlds. I think if Eureka descended into campy goofiness, I'd have deserted the series long ago (paging Dr. Who), but the writers seem to respect the characters and the stories they tell, without losing their sense of whimsy. I'm a major fan of the Buffyverse, and most things Whedonesque, so I do love a good melodrama, but I have to say I'm surprised to find how much I like Eureka's lighter tone. I've stuck with it for the past few seasons mostly because it's on cable and easy to record, but I think it's holding up quite well as the series moves along. Well, just a random thought to share.
Answer: Interesting comparison. But
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