Noise complaint? I’ll tell you about a noise complaint. Yesterday, I was trying to sleep and some bint was rattling her car horn like a banshee outside my bedroom window to the attention of no one in particular. I wanted to rip her arms off and beat her to death with the wet ends. Anyway, this episode of Eureka is written by Johanna Stokes in her final outing as a writer for Eureka. The Princess Switch director Mike Rohl returns for only his third of twelve episodes, this being a couple of months before he directs “All Mine” from The CW’s Reaper.

With Beverly fully established for the umpteenth time as super mysterious, sketchy, horrible, and scary, Henry gets into Kim’s GD office to find out what the ginger did there. Now fully back at GD, he’s given free rein of the place simply to bore the life out of me with this terribly dull and utterly uninteresting plot. Jack is called out to a noise complaint from Dr Babajanian’s neighbors… three miles down the road. After the other day, I’d have strung him up until he urinated himself, then drowned him in it. Am I being too descriptive of my hatred of people?

In the B-plot, Abby and Jack agreed that Zoe should be going back to LA with her mother, so we’re dragging that out too. There is a sense of trying to tie the plots together like a conspiracy theorist simply to make the world feel bigger, as Beverly gave Zoe an Augmented Reality headset so she can do virtual therapy. Little did Eureka’s writers know, by 2020 we’d all be sat in front of laptops asking a shrink to stop the voices as you want to shout about politicians doing a poor job. That’s the only virtual therapy we have.

Look, I’m going to say it right now, and I’m going to maybe veer off the path to do it, but at some point, I’m going to rant about this Abby, Jack, Zoe thing. Not because the writing is poor, it is a bit better out this time with Stokes, but because these divorced parents things always annoy me. Not that the rest of the episode is all that unique or special either. After speaking with Zoe and Abby at the house, Jack goes back to the station as he nurses his head, only to turn his back for a minute, and Jo is gone.

Gone-gone, no one has heard of her, known her, or seen her, ever. And the same again later on, and again, and again, and again. Yes, it is a proper bit of Eureka where dumb-dumb Jack has to save the day with his everyman charm that’s not really getting too much time to shine of late. I don’t hate it, I’ll admit. “Games People Play” is just one of those episodes from season 2 that just happen, a bit like “Try, Try Again.”

One of the main setup points is Zoe asking Jack if he is really fine with Abby taking her back to LA, in what is actually the most emotionally connected moment we’ve had with Eureka in a while. As I said last week, I have a personal connection to the whole separated/divorced parents thing, as many people do, so seeing it shown in film and TV is always a delight (read with sarcasm) because it is always done so deftly. There is a tiny bit of nuance here with Stokes’ writing, but once again, I’m left bored and annoyed by the whole idea.

I get it, Jack and Abby made an agreement. They did whatever was right for them a year ago when Zoe ran away to live with Jack. That isn’t my point. The point that I have more or less is that every single storyline that involves divorced parents revolves around the parents shouting at each other, the kid basically screaming what they would prefer out of the situation at hand, and it is all there to create drama. I get it, that’s the point of TV drama, but as we’ve seen in recent years, you can do drama without it looking cartoonish or overdramatized.

Yes, I agree that what I’m asking for defeats the purpose of the theme of “Games People Play.” However, there is part of me that wants to see one of these stories where the parents turn to the kid and ask, like actual mature adults in a tense situation, what the third party here would prefer. Maybe, and this is just a mad notion that might just solve all the world’s problems, we ask the other person that’s involved in these massive life-altering decisions what they would like to do?

Traveling hundreds (and hundreds) of miles every weekend, every other weekend, on school holidays, and such isn’t always fun, but if that’s the compromise, so be it. Building off of what I said last week, this idea of Abby taking Zoe away from Jack doesn’t make her likable. It doesn’t make her complex or give her dimension. For the only two episodes she’s ever in, she’s about as likable as a turd that’s been smeared up a public bathroom wall. On my hit list (with a capital S) this week, it goes: Joanne, horn woman, Elon Musk, the BBC, Paul Chuckle, Abby, and Cardinal Richelieu.

If you’re here for a review without spoilers, you’re about a decade too late to complain. Basically, the whole town is being sucked off into the nether realm in a plot that’s actually about an unreliable narrator, but unlike Russell T Davies’ re-writes, this one makes sense. Both for the theme and for the plot itself. As an idea, it is fine. There is truly little to complain about with it, other than gripes with divorced parent tropes. My biggest thing here is probably the fact that we’re doing this whole people disappearing/memory issues thing, but we don’t tie Henry in.

We saw it at the end of “Phoenix Rising.” Henry zapped Jack’s brain to make him forget about the four years he spent with Allison during the season 1 finale. Blah blah blah, it is all a bit boring because Eureka does mystery about as well as I talk about hidden object games. However, we’re not tying that back in, we’re not fully going for mad ideas, and we’re keeping it all “grounded” in a dark mystery. I think that’s my problem with season 2, it just tries too hard to do heavy stories without fully using the premise of the show to its fullest potential.

At least so far, Eureka does a lot of out-there things throughout the years, as we’ll get to eventually. Nonetheless, when it comes to its Doctor Who-esque episodes that feel like they are spinning wheels on a mystery or a short-lived arc, like “Games People Play,” the ones that reaffirm some things we probably already know or care about, and we just want to move on, it gets dull. By Doctor Who-esque, I of course mean those episodes that you want to skip on a rewatch, maybe even 10 minutes in, once you remember what this one is about.

“Games People Play” is fine the first time, ok the second time, skip the third time, forget until 10 minutes in and skip the fourth time, and wish Abby would go away the fifth time. Ultimately, the most memorable and touching part of the episode as a whole is when Vincent and the town are at GD like it was a hospital, waiting to see Jack and “Our girl.” The most frustrating part of the whole thing is that it takes until then for Abby to see that not only is Zoe happy here, but also Jack is a better person because of it, and they’ve both found roots.

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Eureka “Games People Play”

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Two good, solid emotionally connected moments.

Cons

• Does nothing but spin wheels on a mystery.
• Another dull version of divorced parents arguing over kids.