Welcome back Eureka fans!
The second episode in this second half of season four is called Reprise, but it could also have been called Carter’s Bad Day! 
Sheriff Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson) begins his day in the company of Allison Blake (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) and her family. Carter is given the task of babysitting while Allison is away for the day. But while Jack is enjoying the domesticity of his new family situation, a new person has arrived in Eureka.
Dr. Holly Marten (Felicia Day) finds herself at Cafe Diem where she and Vincent (Christopher Gauthier) hit it off. She eventually ends up at Global Dynamics, but her contact with a variety of the Eureka citizens becomes important later on.
Fargo (Neil Grayston) updates his work schedule for the day by contacting his assistant, Larry Haberman (Christopher Jacot), who is on vacation and is in contact via video image on Fargo’s computer. Larry is a very devoted employee. I wonder if Global Dynamics could clone him for those of us who could really use an assistant who does not have a life? Fargo learns that Holly is in town to investigate the Faster Than Light Technology (FTL) highlighted in the previous Eureka episode. This makes Fargo more than a little paranoid.
Meanwhile, Allison has left Kevin and baby Jenna with Carter who seems to love his role as surrogate father for the day. Kevin (Trevor Jackson) tells Carter that he misses the fun they had together when they went on investigations together. Naturally, Carter knows nothing about it and wants nothing to do with it.
At G.D, Jo Lupo (Erica Cerra) confronts Fargo about Zane’s (Niall Matter) knowledge of his relationship with Jo in an alternate time line. The conversation ends abruptly as Fargo suddenly walks away to greet Holly as she enters, introduces herself and immediately is geeked out by the FTL device!
Fargo believes that Holly’s purpose is to spy on him then report back to Senator Wen (Ming Na), so, at first, Fargo is very professional in his relationship with Holly. That changes later on as he becomes more and more susceptible, as do many of the other people living in Eureka, to suggestion from music they have been listening to. Fargo goes so far as to demonstrate the FTL device on Holly.
Holly disappears to Fargo’s delight. Fargo’s justification is that Holly would have discovered that it was based on the “Einstein Bridge”, the device that sent everyone back to 1947. Their secret would be out and they’d all be in huge trouble.
We cannot forget Henry (Joe Morton) and Grace Monroe (Tembi Locke) as they celebrate six months together with a special breakfast and a new invention. They, too, have been listening to music.
Carter gets a cell phone call from Jo to inform him that Holly has gone missing. Kevin comes in handy when he suggests that Holly could be at the B.C.E site (Bosun Cloud Exciter – catcher’s mitt) mentioned in the previous episode. Kevin excitedly wants to pursue his idea. Carter disagrees. As Carter gets distracted by Vincent’s odd behavior, wanting to party early in the day, Kevin steals Carter’s cruiser and heads out to the B.C.E site. What music was Kevin listening to?
Segue to the B.C.E site where Carter, accompanied by Jo Lupo locates his wayward jeep. Kevin and Holly step out of the trees. Holly is ecstatic. She is excited that she is the first human to travel using Faster Than Light technology without traveling inside a capsule. Jo has already determined that both Holly and Fargo have been acting “insane”. As Jo accompanies Holly back to G.D., Carter gets a phone call from Allison on her way to a medical conference. Allison wants to know how Kevin and Jenna are doing?
Carter does not tell her about Kevin’s grand theft auto which appears to redeem Carter in Kevin’s eyes. Her cell connection dies just as Allison discovers an accident on the road ahead. Stopping, she is directed to a vehicle that has run through a barrier and down a steep hill. Allison is unable to call for help since her cell phone has no reception, but she does manage to make it down the hill to the car. She slips and smacks her head on a rock on the way down, but quickly recovers. The driver is not there. Allison reasons that he probably banged his head, is confused and wandered away. Allison saves the victim of the car accident and continues on her way, assuming that everything is fine. We discover later on, that it’s not fine.
Back at G.D. Zane and Jo are continuing to discuss their relationship, at least, the one that Zane believes happened and that Jo continues to deny. Later, Carter returns to his office where Deputy Andy has been babysitting.
Jo calls as she is driving by her new house to tell Carter that everything is under control – not. Her brand new house has been burned to the ground. And what is worse, the perpetrator, Zane, is still at it. He is observed wielding a flame thrower!
Surprisingly, the next scene opens on Jo Lupo behind bars. There is some compensation for confused viewers when it’s revealed that Zane is handcuffed to a chair on the other side of the cell in Eureka’s jail. Carter comes up with what he believes is the reason for the craziness. He suggests to Jo, “maybe that’s it. What Fargo did to Holly, and now Zane has gone postal. What do they have in common?” Jo responds, “They are both idiots.”
Carter decides that it was because they were both in the capsule together, so it was a side effect of the F.T.L drive.
Not to be forgotten, we return to Henry’s garage where he and Grace are admiring Henry’s latest handiwork. Whatever Henry’s device is, it’s not immediately explained. But the pieces start coming together when Carter with Kevin drive up to an area where rocks have been falling from a rockslide. Except the rocks remain hovering in thin air. Carter calls Jo to observe the unusual phenomenon. Instead of Jo showing up, Holly comes in her place and tells Carter that Jo is busy herding dogs. “Someone let the dogs out of the behavioural lab,” states Holly. She then notices the unusual rock effect and identifies it as a stasis field. Which, says Holly, is still expanding. And, again, Kevin makes off with Sheriff Carter’s vehicle.
Back at the jail, Carter discovers Kevin. Carter tells Kevin that he can’t drive. Kevin’s response, “Not legally.” Deputy Andy hands baby Jenna back to Carter. Jenna throws up on him. This is definitely not Carter’s day. Carter heads into the bathroom to clean up. When he comes back into the office he hears Kevin singing the lyrics to the theme from “ Cops”. It turns out that Kevin has made a playlist of songs he feels would fit the two of them working as cop buddies. Carter checks out Kevin’s play list. One of the songs is, “Who Let The Dogs Out”. Things then begin to fall into place.
On the case together, Kevin and Carter discover that Cafe Diem, the location of the server with all the music that has been downloaded is quite the rocking place. However, when Carter attempts to turn the music off, Vincent and the other partiers get a little agitated. Carter phones Jo and asks her to find out if Zane is a Talking Heads fan. The conversation ends abruptly when Carter’s cell phone gets knocked out of his hand, to him, the culmination of his very bad day. It turns out that Zane was indeed listening to the band “Talking Heads”, whose song lyrics includes “Burning Down the House”.
Meanwhile, the stasis field bubble continues to expand toward G.D. It quickly becomes crunch time. Holly realizes, through her explanation of the connection of everyone to the music, that it’s her fault people are being influenced by songs. With Zane’s and Jo’s help, Holly manages to reprogram her device so that she can fix the situation with the people who created the stasis field, Henry and Grace.
Unfortunately, Henry and Grace are trapped within the field. At the same time, Carter and Kevin come up with the same conclusions as Zane, Fargo and Holly. Carter races off to Henry’s garage leaving Kevin with Deputy Andy. Zane, Fargo and Holly become trapped in the stasis field as they attempt to escape Global Dynamics.
Just when it looks as if Carter will have to save the day on his own, Kevin discovers a frightening detail, the song, “I Shot The Sheriff” (Bob Marley) is being played on the server. Carter arrives at Henry’s garage and surveys the scene. Not surprising, the stasis field is slowly expanding as Jo arrives. The song, “I Shot The Sheriff” continues to play in the background. Carter turns to Jo to see her aiming a gun at him. He runs for it, straight into the stasis field. Jo fires her gun at Carter.
The bullet flies into the field and hangs there. It looks as though as soon as the field is turned off, Carter will be killed. A minor physics concern for me was that the bullet does not hit Carter. The bullet is traveling at a much greater rate than Carter. The momentum of the bullet would cause it to travel further into the field than Carter was able to reach as he ran.
Kevin comes to the rescue. He attempts to reason with Jo that Carter is her friend. He suddenly realizes that he can play another song to defuse the situation: “Why Can’t We Be Friends”. Jo and Kevin work together. Jo gets ready to push Carter out of the way of the bullet, and Kevin works to shut off the stasis field. When Kevin disconnects the field, the bullet misses Carter and hits Jo. But she is okay. She is wearing a Kevlar bullet proof vest!
Fargo is still furious with Holly. He berates her for her report to Senator Wen. But it turns out that Holly is really there to evaluate the F.T.L for long term space exploration before a 20 billion dollar grant becomes available. Fargo realizes he is about to be rewarded rather than be raked across the coals.
To tidy up loose ends, Jo and Zane meet at her burned out house. She initially denies that they have feelings for each other, but with a passionate kiss, Zane proves her wrong and demonstrates to her true that his feelings (for Jo) are not skin deep.
As the episode winds to a conclusion, most tenderly and touchingly and quite fittingly, Sheriff Carter and Allison spend some much needed intimate time together before they head off to bed.
Allison complains of a headache. As she does, we see the reality of what happened to her on the side of the road and it is not a pretty sight to behold when the culprits are revealed!
Allison runs into Beverly Barlowe (Debrah Farentino), who implants memories of the accident into her mind. Tiny gizmos have been implanted in Allison’s brain and we hear the evil Beverly state that “she will remember what what we want her to”.
There are some interesting bits and pieces to this story, such as the fact that Ming Na’s character’s name is Senator Macala Wen. IMDB lists Ming Na’s name at birth as Ming-Na Wen.
Perhaps the character name is a nod to the accomplishments of this wonderful actress. You can also learn more about Ming Na at her official web site!
Felicia Day has several return appearances on Eureka. She has an internet presence with video gamers, her role in The 
Guild and a very popular video and convention favorite called Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. In my opinion the appearance of Felicia Day on Eureka may be the show catering to a more computer/internet savvy audience.
Eureka returns on Syfy Monday July 26, 2011 with another great episode named “Glimpse” which will feature the return of Felicia Day as Dr. Holly Marten! In the meantime we include the full episode “Reprise” below courtesy of Syfy via Hulu and a sneak peak of “Glimpse” courtesy of Syfy for your pleasure.
Thanks to Kenn for staging this post for me. And thanks to you for stopping by WormholeRiders News Agency
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Regards.
ArcticGoddess1 (Patricia)
