I’ve always felt like shipper was a slag term coined by folks who didn’t want said relationship to happen. Sort of like “Go sit in the corner with your shippers!” I tend to not buy into potential relationships on TV shows because at some point you’re likely going to get screwed by TPTB. J.J. Abrams and I do not get along because he’s a fan of what I like to call love geometry—the more angles and obstacles the better (from Felicity through Alias through Lost and now Fringe. Trust me on this. He’s bent.) Occasionally, though, a show will get it right and reward viewers for giving dozens of hours of their time to the characters and the relationships. This week's Eureka made a leap in the right direction for Jack and Allison. Oh, and the show was renewed last week for a fifth season. Sweet!
The episode find Zoe home on a school break and falling back into friendly rapport with Jo, Grace, Vince, and a new HoloSkype (where can I get this?) buddy, to be determined. While Zoe catches up with Jo at Cafe Diem and dishes about Mr. TBD, Carter watches Allison and Jenna with Grant across the restaurant and gets increasingly itchy at their ease with each other. They head outside and Grant is sort of working up to asking Allison out on a proper date when Carter bails into the conversation citing police business. Grant begs off and then Carter says he needs to speak with Allison, and it’s a fairly long conversation, so he invites her to dinner. She happily agrees and you see it all over her face that it’s not a date for her but Carter is still pleased. When she walks away, he asks himself why it took him four years to do that. Can I get a “DUH!”
Carter’s newest case breaks out in the would-be basement of Jo’s new would-be home, which has encountered slabus interruptus because the local geo expert (who’s one of Zoe’s mentors from Tesla) has discovered a very, very old and very, very rare….pinky on the site. Jo is not happy. She wails about her dojo and her indoor firing range and her beautiful home that has got to get in gear because she needs her space.
Later that night, Carter is natted up for his date and Zoe tuts at him and says she’ll take a picture, but realizes she left her phone at the dig site, so they go to fetch it and find that her mentor is frozen in cement (think Han Solo). They take him back to GD and assume he’s dead when his heart starts to beat. Then they assume he’s encased in cement until Allison realizes he is cemented. She comments on Carter’s appearance when he arrives and teasingly asks him if he had a date, and he laughs and says yes, and then she gets it that he meant with her. She says he hadn’t mentioned the kiss from 1947 so she assumed that was the end of that and thought they were just having dinner. He’s goofy giddy that she’s been thinking about the kiss. Duty calls and the chat is tabled. Also at GD, Zoe runs into Zane and tips Carter that he is her mystery guy.
Elsewhere, Henry is wooing Grace and it turns out his idea of a perfect first date already was a perfect first date for Grace and AlternaHenry. Sangria, picnic, and beautiful beach sunset projected inside the garage. When Grace confesses she’s been there before, Henry’s hurt but determined to find another way to woo. Grace says she’s happy for the effort. Henry asks Carter what to do and he doesn’t know but says Henry should try the opposite approach and ask the least likely person for advice. Henry says he thought was Carter and thanks him anyway and goes on.
Grace retreats to the spa run by Keegan Connor Tracy (still rocking an awesome haircut, BTW, and sidebar: she needs to guest on Covert Affairs so we can get her back onscreen with Chris Gorham. Just saying). Grace and Zoe, who’s taking a break from cemented mentor, talk about boys and brains and wooing. I’d have to go back and look at last season, but it seems like they went way up on the geekspeak with Zoe this season, or she’s just a REALLY fast learner at Harvard. The spa treatment has the unintended side effect of combining with the properties of the dig site, and soon Zoe starts to cement, too.
Everybody rushes to save her and they realize the superpotent steam from the spa is the ticket because it can penetrate the stone. Once Zoe is recovered, Zane drops by and they're very flirty. Jo comes in and sees them and is devastated, doubly so because she encouraged Zoe, which she tells Carter. He stammers over telling her maybe it won’t last and she asks what if it does.
Allison comes out in the hall to discuss Zoe, and Carter finally mans up. He asks her if she thought going out with Grant was a date and she says yes. Then he asks why going out with him wasn’t, and she says they have a friendship that she won’t jeopardize by pursuing a relationship with him, so she can’t think about dating him. He takes that in and walks away from her. The camera locks on her for a few moments and you finally see it register that she’s sad about that because maybe it would be worth the risk and she might lose him anyway by rejecting the possibility. While she's lost in that, Carter dips back into the frame and finally lays the mother of all kisses on her. They keep kissing and smiling and it’s ON!
Out in the foyer, Henry swoops Grace into an embrace and starts singing to her. Before she can protest too much, Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me with Science” starts blasting amid strobe lights with Fargo DJing from above. Henry swings her around and sings along and she is enchanted (as she should be) and laughing.
Grant is away from the main story this week, saddled with a potential IRS investigation because Larry listed 11 dependents for him instead of 1 on the W2. I’m not totally sure what the arc was with Larry, but he later delivers a mystery gift basket to Grant and then seems to sort of imply he wants to buddy up to him. I took it as a romantic gesture but it may be that Larry is just socially awkward about how to pursue a bromance. The gift basket entices Grant to a rendezvous point where he comes across the villainess Beverly (whom we last saw in season 2), and she says she has ties to him via her father. Dun. Dun. DUN.
So, we have Carter and Allison finally moving forward, Grace and Henry getting acquainted and Zane and Zoe maybe warming up to something. Busy week! The episode was directed by Joe Morton, who did an awesome job with all the threads. I really wasn’t all that into the MacGuffin this week. There was so much going on that that was the thing of least interest to me. I will always watch Keegan Connor Tracy so I hope they bring her back—it would certainly work for the ladies to have a hang out outside of Cafe Diem. I loved that Fargo’s nerdiest of ideas was perfect for Grace and Henry. I was in middle school when that song was in fairly constant rotation on MTV (back when they were a video network, yes, really), so it’s always been a silly special song to me.
Not sure what to make of Beverly’s return. That may be too many cooks in the kitchen—sort of like the arc with Frances Fisher. I don’t know that Grant needed a secret spy/villainy tangent. I was happy with them exploring his acclimation to living 63 years outside his frame of reference.
The Zoe/Zane thing could be cute in the now, but I think it'll be terribly traumatic for them and for Jo should they ever find out about the alternaverse where Jo and Zane were together. Because Zoe is Jo's friend, I think the harder thing for her to take would be that Jo is grieving the loss of her version of Zane and still looking for signs of him in the Zane of this reality.
Per what I wrote last week, I’m completely down with Carter and Allison being allowed to pursue a relationship. It’s genuine. Carter has loved her pretty much since the pilot, and has seriously pined for her when she wasn’t available to him. He's bratted out a few times but has otherwise been a constant, platonic companion, through Nathan's death and Jenna's birth. Let them try this. This is a smart show. I think they can do this right. I hope they do this right.
We had a glimpse of Nathan in the teaser for next week. Producer Amy Berg said on Twitter over the weekend that Ed Quinn, who plays Nathan, isn’t back on the show. So, fingers crossed this is a one-off driveby or a dream or a memory. Only two episodes until the hiatus. Again with the BOOO.
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