Eureka ep. 2.1 - "Phoenix Rising" Review

The second season of Eureka starts out strong with this episode picking up a month after the season one finale.

As a result of Henry messing with the time stream in last season’s finale, Sheriff Carter and Henry are the only two people in Eureka who remember four years of a perfect future life. This knowledge is not sitting well with either man.

While Carter and Henry struggle to move past their memories, people in Eureka start bursting into flame. [How cool is it that I get to write about a show where people bursting into flame is just par for the course?!] While Carter investigates, Stark is released from his position as Director of Global Dynamics due to his tampering with the artifact. It was his experimenting that left Kim dead and the artifact…well, no one knows, “dead” maybe? In a surprising twist, Allison becomes Stark’s replacement as Director.

All this doesn’t fit with the idyllic future Carter once lived. Carter loses faith as Allison and he drift father apart instead of closer together. Henry cobbles together a device that will allow the two men to forget the future they once lived, and after explaining that Henry will never forgive Carter for allowing Kim to die, Henry erases Carter’s memory of the future.

Only, Henry doesn’t do the same to himself. Instead, he’s off to work for Global Dynamics, but with what sinister motives?

Oh, and the artifact? Turns out that all that energy can’t just disappear. It simply moved somewhere else. Like, inside Kevin, Allison’s autistic son. Interesting…

The visual effects in this show continue to amaze me. Just like the effects in Battlestar Galactica, I am surprised that they can do as much – and as realistically – as they can with a TV budget. I could print off screen captures from the show – Henry standing between the explosion of the artifact and Kim, for example – that are simply mind-blowing.

The show is a little unfriendly to new viewers (and my review as well – I assume in my review a knowledge of the characters and series), but I think the underlying mystery and the quirkiness of the characters could draw even those new viewers in. It also helps that the website and recaps are full of all the information you need to fully enjoy the individual episodes.

Next episode: Fargo messes around with a force-field generator and the town is in peril.