Oh, lovely, like the theoretical sciences, I get to break one of our rules here. Directed by Tim Mattheson, he was once the Vice President and arguably had a better character than anyone currently in politics. We get a very weird crossover of a writer’s history, as Bruce Miller makes his Eureka debut. Miller is probably best known for his 12 episodes of Eureka where he was a long-time producer, 2 episodes of The 4400, and some other stuff, but he also created for TV and showran our reality now… otherwise known as The Handmaid’s Tale, the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction turned non-fiction.

The future of gaming is truly here, as we got a glimpse of Half-Life 2 and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent, which has that terrible North American green cover art. With the advent of Eureka being a town of criminals reigned in by an idiot, it only makes sense that there is a headhunter who works with the FBI to drag the best criminals to GD. After Niall Matter’s Zane Donovan steals a couple of million from Border Patrol’s “war on drugs” (war on the poor) chest, he’s thrown in the paddy wagon and dragged to Calif-ego-ton, or wherever Eureka is meant to be this week.

He’s dragged into town in handcuffs because Jack has to rein him in like he’s breaking in a new horse. Oh and, Henry is joined by Nathan to work on one of Zane’s projects when he was young. Basically, Eureka is doing what CERN wanted to do, but as usual, Eureka doesn’t have the moral or legal restraints of ripping the planet in two by trying to recreate the theory of the Big Bang. Not The Big Bang Theory, where you get crap writers to write what they think nerd-culture is and frame it as “look at these losers.”

I’ll be honest, I sort of rushed through most of that to try and get us to the point where I can talk about something more interesting than Henry acting like me, watching wrestling and cartoons instead of doing work. In fact, I do want to talk about that, but not in the context of him watching it so much. Yes, I’m jumping ahead a bit, but I’ll get back to the introduction of Zane in a minute. What is interesting about what Henry watches and what is shown in that store early on is what they are and why they are significant.

Slammiversary 2007, main event King of the Mountain match for the vacant TNA World Heavyweight Championship. Which was stripped from Kurt Angle (Olympic medalist, broken freakin’ neck) weeks before, and this particular moment took place minutes after the fantastic Samoa Joe put the Phenomenal (and flat earther) AJ Styles through the announce table. The exact moment is Chris Harris close-lining Angle from the top of the penalty box. You don’t need that level of information for what Henry is watching and I’m talking about, but it is fun to recognize that bit of footage. It’s interesting because it is TNA footage on a Sci-Fi Channel show that aired August 28th, 2007.

An episode of Eureka that aired directly after CM Punk became the #1 contender for the ECW Heavyweight Championship, which he would win after a 16-minute match with John Morrison just before next week’s “Sight Unseen.” My editor thinks I’ve just gone crazy and just want to talk about wrestling, but TNA was broadcast on Spike TV, which has turned into Paramount Network. Sci-Fi (or Syfy now) still is owned by NBCUniversal. While at this point, WWE and TNA were rivals.

It’s not entirely the Monday Night Wars of the ’90s with WCW and WWF (now WWE), but the brass balls to show TNA wrestling, WWE’s latest rival at that point, minutes after WWE’s ECW. You need to be on something or ready to fight with someone. Doing that is like putting Chewbacca on the bridge of the USS Enterprise; you just don’t do it. Sadly enough, when Henry also watches Dexter’s Lab (owned by Warner), it isn’t “The Big Cheese,” also from December of 1996 – it was instead from episode 12.

Then, of course, the significance of Half-Life is pretty apparent; scientists who try to do super dangerous stuff, only to achieve deadly success. We’ll get back to that in a minute. So Zane is lifted from a budget EB Games and taken to Eureka, Jack takes him to the lab, and that’s where Pinky and the Brain are tossing a coin to see who babysits the simulated big bang. After it is explained that GD is using his workings, Zane just wanders over to press a couple of buttons. Minutes later, Henry, who is babysitting the thing that’s going to kill us all, starts watching wrestling and cartoons, effectively age-regressing.

Great, I love when shows try to use wrestling as this “lower art form,” yet wrestling has told better storylines than a lot of seasons of TV. The easy example is Game of Thrones, which is terrible, but in particular this season of Eureka, with its “oh, isn’t Beverly mysterious and Henry a bad person?” I’ll admit that Mae Young birthing a hand that grows to the size of an adult human is stupid, but Peak Angle, Cody Rhodes getting the title, Hangman Adam Page, Eddie Guerrero, Edge’s return at the Rumble, Daniel Bryan’s WrestleMania XXX (30) moment, and more are great storytelling or story beats.

The point is, Zane is so smart that it is theorized he turns the Big Bang experiment into something that reduces everyone’s gamma aminobutyric acid, and in Carter speak, that’s “Brain make smart juice.” That’s not how GABA receptors and the deficiency of GABA work; even a wrestling fan can tell you that about one of the major parts of neuroscience. With GABA being something that is made from glutamate (glutamate decarboxylase), it is something that only your brain can create, and any deficiency in adults typically results in poor mental health, including anxiety, fear, and depression, among others. Not age-regression.

If you don’t know that, sure, the idea probably works fine as is. As it turns Henry, Allison, Nathan, and most of the physics lab into hardly functioning morons, otherwise known as children. The basic idea of the episode is that the shield around the experiment fails for one reason or another, making everyone so smart they could score over 100% on their IQ test. As an episode, “E = MC… ?” is fine and allows me to break our no ellipsis rule on purpose, but what else?

Zane’s story is a good start to the episode, and does well enough as the episode progresses, but I’d be hard-pressed to say the whole episode is good. “E = MC… ?” serves two masters, one of which is introducing Zane as a character of mischief for the next couple of seasons.

The other is to finally give us a bit of progression on the season mystery while Henry finds it difficult to act like an adult. Which means he doesn’t want to keep secrets anymore. I mean, it’s not a lot of progress, but at this point, Chinese water torture will feel like you’re driving an F1 car with how slow and nothing this mystery has been, as it is drip-fed to us.

The beginning of “E = MC… ?” is good. It gives us a new character that is a bit out there, and the end gives us a hint towards the end of the season. The middle is where I think I’ve just gone “why do I care?” though. If you’re not being insulted by being told the entertainment you like is childish, I’m sure it’s probably a lot more appetizing. Even then, I’m struggling to say that it is an interesting idea outside of “Jack might just be the smartest one in the room with Henry, Allison, and Nathan.”

Ultimately, “E = MC… ?” is fine and does some good, but we’re a little too late in the season to be finally drip-feeding those basic bits of plot like Henry regrets wiping Jack’s brain. I like Zane; he’s a weird one who is going to be a bit of youthful mischief at GD eventually, as well as other things. Maybe not the best episode of Eureka, but certainly one that pushes us forward in one direction or another.

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Eureka "E = MC... ?"

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• TNA.
• Zane's introduction.
• I like the headhunter idea, too bad it isn't used more.

Cons

• So wrestling and cartoons are childish? Tell that to every 20-something now.