The first season brought the entire package to the table: interesting, thought-provoking plots that bristled with brilliant characters who interacted intelligently. The last two seasons generally featured lackluster plots with moments of clever dialogue. You can tell at least some of the writers from the first season are still around because it has that same crackle when it does, but it doesn't have it as often.
A great example came last night when Zoe and Fargo were talking and Jack walked up moments after Eva: that rat-a-tat exchange of both witticisms and pure character-driven dialogue that made the show so much fun to begin with. It lay somewhere between the writing and the actors, but it requires both, and the first season was just lousy with it! That's what made Eureka the show we all love.
Let's pull-out the formula: someone creates a "gadget" (or one is discovered/triggered) which is, very literally, the (plot) device for the episode. Things happen which get Jack and Jo on the case. Alli hears about it and gets involved. The eggheads develop a solution but don't know how to practically apply it and Jack uses common sense to solve the case.
In the first season, this worked beautifully because they bothered writing according to the formula. Now they are busier developing gadgets. The writers and producers have become the eggheads, toiling constantly on developing bigger and better plot devices, but apparently, none of them know Jack. Where is the common sense guy to wrangle them in and say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah - a high-tech drone is running loose - we get it. The problem isn't 'what can the drone do' or 'how do we make it look like this really happened,' the problem is that Henry is a rocket scientist and Zane is a computer genius, but neither knows how it works!"? (Then he should take the show Bible and knock the Taco Bell right out of the head writer's mouth in mid-cynicism!)
The other weakness is the lack of Henry - or a suitable replacement.
Henry played an integral part in the first season - he was just as important as Jack and Alli, if not moreso. And though the last episode of the first season really screwed things up, I understand why it was there (nowadays, it's best to write every season as though it's your last - that's why so many shows limp through their sophomore season: no one expected them to still be around!) - now they just need to find a way to put it behind them without ret-conning it entirely. Not that that should be too hard; none of it ever really "happened" anyway. So why isn't Henry still a major component of the show?
I actually think the actor wants to be written-out and Jo's new boyfriend is being groomed to take his place. I have nothing to base this on other than my so-called "insight," but if it plays out this way, remember I told you so. As far as that goes, I would be down for that. Zane and Jack have a different chemistry, but it's just as strong. They tried using Nathan in this same fashion, but it just didn't work - mainly because they couldn't handle the love-triangle plot as well as they should have. It brought too much constant tension to the show, anyway; instead of heightening the comedy and romance, it diminished it.
[SPOILERS]
Why do they keep getting rid of good characters?
I missed several episodes and will watch them online one of these days, so I don't know what happened to Nathan yet, but he was a great foil for Carter! And the psychologist: just because she was involved in the Artifact storyline (which is "over" - no denouement, no explanations, no long-term effects - just done) does not mean that she has to be entirely written out of the series. She was a great foil for Allison. Now Eva!
I am so tired of the modern "arc" crap! The problem is that modern TV (and comics) writers create these "arcs" out of whole cloth, then destroy any and everything that had to do with them as a "conclusion." The Artifact arc and the psychologist are great examples:
She was a fixture in the community and we learned she had been working clandestinely the entire time. There was not even one clue as to her true nature in that entire time? Aren't these the smartest people on the planet!? And when she went "bad," she suddenly had no redeeming qualities - she went from being some sort of plant to a full-on murderess in the span of maybe 3-4 episodes!
Put simply, most of the writers working in serialized fiction these days cannot handle continuity... or characterization, or dialogue, or...
I said it. That's why they have to work in the limited "arc" format. Sure, it is also for packaging (so a single season DVD works as a stand-alone story, so title-runs can be repackaged as trade paperbacks, etc.), but if that is the only reason, then why is there hardly ever any continuity associated with concluded arcs? When is the last time the psychologist was even mentioned - or, for that matter, the Artifact!? Nathan spent his life trying to figure it out and Allison nearly lost her son to it, so... what? "Out of sight, out of mind"?
Eureka needs to commit: either it is a sci-fi dramedy - in which case the writers need to have the show Bible open at literally every meeting - or it is an episodic pastry (a "puff"-piece), in which case none of it matters anyway. Right now, it's hard to tell what actually "counts" and what doesn't.
© C Harris Lynn, 2008
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