The main story arc in this part of the season was Frances Fisher’s Fixer character concealing a dark secret. Her character was contrasted by lots of slapstick fun including a plot about a robotic dog show. At the end of her storyline, the diabolical Thorne was even revealed to be a reluctant sort of anti-hero whose motivations were honorable. Instead of parting as enemies, Sheriff Jack Carter even let her escape government prosecution at the cost of his job. (I’m betting he gets it back though.)  It wasn’t all fun and games this year. One of the show’s main characters, Nathan Stark, met his untimely end in the first half of the season. Ratings highlights provided by SCI FI Channel’s parent company NBC Universal include:

· Eureka had its best season average ever with viewers aged 25-54, 1.56 million. That number includes full DVR playback for five of the season’s eight episodes.
· Eureka was the #1 cable entertainment program in August and September on Tuesdays for the 25-54 age range.

SCI FI Channel Photo: Liane Hentscher

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Herrera has learned how to sculpt clouds and even puts his face into one of them for a campaign ad? Is nothing sacred? Zane, Allison and Carter are determined to find out the secrets of The Fixer’s underground lab. Zane has 35 mm film and they develop it, learning more about the military installation.

Of course, something in Eureka has to endanger the entire town and this week someone has created a second sun. They kind of took the mystery out here because the promos revealed it was Zoe’s science partner, a nine-year-old genius named Kylie. Their assignment was to make a working model of the solar system and it seems the little one took things quite literally. Her sun is only about 1,000 feet high so it won’t reveal the existence of the town but left unchecked bad things could happen.

And hey, in a interesting development they actually gave Deputy Jo some storyline. Seems she’s actually going to act on her feelings for Zane.

And of course, they do. Eureka is in danger of getting blown off the map and The Fixer orders a full scale evacuation. Carter notes that Thorne doesn’t seem to want the town saved.

Carter, Alison and Zane are able to discover that whatever happened in the secret fortress killed several men and that it aged them to an average of 80 years old before doing so.

Luckily Henry figures out a way to make the second sun implode on itself. But nothing is ever that easy in this town. The rocket delivery system doesn’t work so Zane and Carter actually have to drive closer to the sun and launch from there.

They should die from the heat but Zane has been working on a chemical that can protect you in extreme heat. That’s right folks, they save the town by wearing Degree. Now Thorne and Allison face off but Thorne still won’t tell them what was in the secret lab or what happened there.

Oh, and in the mayor’s race Henry wins by a write-in campaign. He began the season in jail and now he’s the mayor. Henry Deacon is the Nelson Mandela of Eureka.

Pictured:(l-r) Colin Ferguson as Sheriff Jack Carter, Joe Morton as Henry Deacon — SCI FI Channel Photo: Liane Hentscher

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Meanwhile, Zoe’s science partner creates a second sun. Which would cause the end of the Earth because – it would get really, really hot I would imagine. I passed a few high school science classes, baby.

And hopefully we’ll get back to Allison and Carter working through their problems. Last week Lexi had more of a romantic subplot going than those two.

Pictured:Jordan Hinson as Zoe Carter – SCI FI Channel Photo:Liane Hentscher

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Lexi has convinced Zoe she should leave school for three days to go learn yoga. Sheriff Carter’s not having any of that nonsense, leaving Lexi and Zoe furious with him. Meanwhile, The Fixer Eva Thorne and Zane are breaking the code on her super-secret project. It turns out the cryptex opens a mountain fortress of some kind. I want a mountain fortress! Or not, can you imagine the property taxes on one of those things?

In a development that must surely be related Zoe and two of her friends find a mysterious hole in the wall at their school. Yes folks, within the course of a few seconds not one, two or three but five people walk into mysterious holes in walls. Have any of these people lived in Eureka for very long?

Meanwhile, Lexi has got herself trapped in a force field as she was trying to find the recycling center. Why would a hippie move to the most super-scientific place on Earth again? There’s no need to fear because.. dah dah dah, Captain Eureka is here! This guy looks pretty goofy, nice job to whoever costumed him. He tries to turn off the security system but makes it worse, adding lasers to the force field crunch. He does eventually sort of save the day, but not before trashing the roof of Jack’s sheriff car.

Lexi goes to the hospital where the guys are still fawning over her. Wonder if they’ll feel that way after finding out she is not only pregnant, but hasn’t informed the father? Now Carter has to talk to Eureka’s flight expert, who did work on the “Skywalker 2000″ boots. Nice Star Wars reference, guys. They also slip in an “It’s a Bird, It’s A Plane” in joke. But those boots were scrapped and the scientist hasn’t left the lab all day, crossing him off the Captain Eureka suspect list.

Allison explains that all scientists deep down want to be superheroes, and even reveals that as a kid she wanted to be Wonder Woman. Um, stop the other storyline right now, I want to hear more about Salli Richardson’s Wonder Woman obsession. Like everything. Fargo has yet another Eureka prototype gadget for Carter, a phone that goes right into your brain. He’s creeped out as I would be. Carter only has to speak the name of the person he wants to call and in theory it will reach them.

But it wouldn’t be Eureka if the phone worked the way it was supposed to. Lexi and Carter pass a rocket-fuel leak and call Henry for advice. He suggests they call Zane, but Carter’s brain phone accidentally causes a spark that starts a fire. Here comes Captain Eureka with a gadget that puts out the fire, but completely trashes Jack’s car. They’re not getting along.

Meanwhile Zane runs into Zoe and her gang, one of whom accidentally turns on the security system locking them all inside the secret facility with little air. They use their cellphones to send a numerical signal to Carter.

Carter, figuring out that our would-be hero has a crush on Lexi, tries to trap him by starting a rumor that Lexi’s hurt and blames the Captain. He shows up but walks right through the trap using his phasing power. But he doesn’t make it all the way through, leaving a finger behind. Allison tells Carter the discarded gadgets are recycled, leading him to realize Chuck is Captain Eureka.

Chuck’s already phased into a wall and can’t get out. That gadget was discarded for a reason. The user begins phasing uncontrollably, eventually falling apart. Also, Lexi can’t find Zoe and Carter realizes the numeric message was for him, it was Zoe’s birthday and the latitude and longitude of her location.

But there’s 20-foot thick titanium walls in the facility, meaning Jack will have to wear the defective phasing suit and hope they can fix him later. He gets through all four walls but now he phases uncontrollably and can’t turn the power back on. Luckily, he still has brain phone and uses its spark to restart the system. Go, go, defective Eureka gadget!

Carter and The Fixer face off, and Thorne still won’t say what she’s up to. Carter isn’t letting it drop though. We end with Thorne in the secret lab with a computer chip of some sort. It’s OK, Thorne, Carter will just end up having to save you and the rest of the town later.

Pictured: Ever Carradine as Lexi Carter — SCI FI Channel Photo: Liane Hentscher

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And Carter will no doubt continue the awkward dance around his feelings for Allison. Having never been in such a situation, what is the ideal length of time you should wait before asking out a girl whose fiance disintegrated in the space-time continuum?

SCI FI Channel Photo: Liane Hentscher

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Sheriff Carter begins his day by being subjected to his sister Lexi’s “new agey” ways. She’s playing some Egyptian-esque music she composed that will come into play later. It looks like they may be setting her up as a Carter for the original Carter, helping him see things in a different way just in time to save the town.

After that we’re off to help our celebrity archeologist take a mummy out its tomb, with way more technology than is probably necessary. It wouldn’t be Eureka otherwise. Eureka’s resident Egyptologist warns them of a curse on the tomb and of course, no heed is paid to his warning.

That is until the offending scientist and his camerawoman both get mummified. Fargo is convinced he saw the mummy in the memorial hall he’s set up for Dr. Stark. There’s what may be foreshadowing again.

There’s also the side story we knew they had to do, Allison trying to recover from Stark’s death. Carter gives her the logic diamond Stark had left as a wedding gift and she begins having visions of Stark.

But the original mummy disintegrated from extreme dehydration and the plague is not a curse, but a swarm of insects reanimated by radiation used opening the tomb. See, told you they should have just used a crowbar.

In the meantime, Fargo has become a host and now he’s suffering immensely. There’s a tongue-in-cheek Heroes reference when Carter says Save Fargo, Save The Town.

Noting that the camerawoman didn’t disintegrate because she was in very cold water, Carter surmises that could be the cure. The always lucky Fargo gets to be the test case. During his thawing, Stark appears to Allison but everybody sees him this time. It turns out he put a message in the logic diamond so he’d always be with her. Awww…

There’s a funny moment when Fargo tells Allison he was in heaven and saw Dr. Stark and he’s doing OK. The Egyptian psycho-bugs are attracted to Lexi’s new age music, so Carter uses that to lure them all into the fusion-powered freezer at Cafe Diem.

Of course, The Fixer subplot advanced as well. Henry is no longer helping her without some knowledge of what she’s looking for, so she takes a strange cryptic puzzle to Zane. I think she figures him for questionable morals, but I still believe he will side with Carter when the time comes.

Allison watches Stark’s final message to her in a pretty touching scene. He promises not to make the same mistakes he did in their first marriage and that he will never leave her again.

SCI FI Channel Photo: Liane Hentscher

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SCI FI Channel Photo: Liane Hentscher

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MEGA-SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP! SERIOUSLY, SOMEONE DIES!

SCI FI Channel Photo: Liane Hentscher

Of course, Alison and Carter have to work. The Fixer has decreed that 12 people need to be downsized to keep Global Dynamics in the black. Happy Wedding Day, Alison! You get to hand out pink slips to soon to be disgruntled employees, one of whom is certain to put the entire town in danger. Just call it a hunch.

One of the folks they have to fire is maintenance guy Leo. Carter gets hit with a bright blue beam and figures that’s enough, it’s time to get to the wedding. It’ll be over and done with soon, right?

Oh, it gets better. Alison asks Carter to give her away at the wedding. That is just mean. Seriously, who walks their ex down the aisle? That may be the most implausible thing in the whole episode. But now its over and done with – well, it isn’t. Carter wakes up in the shower like he did the day before. Cuts himself shaving like the day before and has the same argument with Zoe he did the day before.

Soon enough Carter figures out he’s in a continuous loop. His sister, who’s come to town in an underlying storyline suggests he’s being given a chance to tell Allison how he feels. He does and even plants one on her and she tries her best to let him down, telling him he’ll always be a friend. Man, Carter does not paid enough for this abuse.

Like a good detective, Carter chases down all possible options including the town’s new atomic clock (which will replace Leo) and The Fixer. She’s up to something shady alright, but time manipulation is not it. Whatever she’s looking for is under the ground and as we learned last week, gives off a form of radiation that is not supposed to exist yet.

After much trial and error Carter figures out the soon to be fired Leo tried to meddle with time. Of course, Leo offs himself accidentally trying to fix the problem. That’s the death we were promised, right?

Wrong. It’s Nathan Stark who dies setting the timestream right and Carter has to break the news to Allison. I have to confess I did not see that coming. I’m still not sure I believe it. I mean, the man did die within two feet of a continuous time loop. The same thing happened to Captain Kirk in Star Trek:Generations, although Kirk got resurrected in a Trek novel he wrote. I will skip the obligatory Shatner ego joke – oops.

I don’t buy Stark being dead at all. I suspect this will give Alison and Carter time to grow close again and some way Stark will come back. Just another triangle development, me thinks. But they did a good job of swerving us in this ep. Leo’s death was a classic red herring, they promise somebody dies and then it’s a character we don’t care about. Fargo volunteered to fix the loop instead of Stark but got turned down.

Loops have been an important part of some of the most beloved genre shows. Supernatural did one last year where Sam kept trying to save Dean from dying over and over. In Stargate’s Window of Opportunity, Col. O’ Neill and Teal’c are trapped in a loop for nearly a year, giving the Gaters a chance to show their comic chops. And golf into a Stargate.

Readers, what are some of your favorite “Groundhog Day” episodes?

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Now that’s torture, folks. Luckily, Eureka is a place where time travel could be used to fix things. We’ve already seen one alternate future where these two crazy kids figure it out. I can’t wait to see how the all-new, all-fun again Eureka solves this romantic triangle.

SCI FI Channel Photo: Llane Hentscher

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Zoe is reluctant about signing up for an advanced physics course, but proud dad Sheriff Carter talks her into embracing her scientific side. Someday she’ll get to build things that endanger Eureka’s populace.

Carter his first intro to the world of biogenetic dogs when he meets Fifi, who explodes soon after their encounter. Fifi’s owner is convinced one of her rivals in the upcoming dog show is behind it. They take this robot dog show more than a little seriously, it seems. But when is there ever just one problem in Eureka?

A scientist who specializes in synthetic mucus is convinced one of the dog show fanatics broke into his lab to steal some. The synthetic- uh, fake snot helps make the robo-dogs more realistic. While Deputy Jo checks the rest of the crime scene, Carter witnesses a localized earthquake that gets him slimed.

How localized? Carter’s the only one that felt it. And he can’t convince anyone else in town it happened, since Eureka doesn’t have any known fault lines. Meanwhile, The Fixer is up to her usual shifty stuff. She’s asked the newly pardoned Henry Deacon to do a radiation scan of an area she plans to put a hotel on. Yeah, right.

Dr. Stark has a little job for Carter. Stark needs a logic diamond from Eureka’s mega-computer lab and he needs a law enforcement signature to get it. It gets better, he wants the ginormous diamond as a wedding gift for Allison. Ouch. Carter, still on the hunt for the elusive earthquakes, consults local seismologist Dr. Hood. Hood lost his scientific mojo a while back and even he doesn’t believe Carter, until Carter mentions he saw lights before the disturbance.

Hood knows that could lead to something and tunnels under Eureka discovering there’s a pocket of magma under the town. Side note: Why do people around here not automatically believe the most outrageous scenario possible? That’s usually the right one. Scully from the X-Files would fit in perfectly.

It turns out the magma pocket is accidentally manmade by a rogue scientist in the computer lab using sound to cook logic diamonds. She was, of course, completely oblivious to the side effects. Stark, Carter and a lovely robotic doggie journey to the center of Eureka to find the magma pocket.

They planned to blow it up and let it drain off but nature’s a step or two ahead of them and it’s Magma Race 2000. The magma drains harmlessly into a nearby lake. Before we leave, Henry tells Carter there’s a form of radiation at the “hotel site” that before today was only theoretical. Showdown with The Fixer is coming up, fans. Considering how the usual scientific miscue in Eureka goes, what in the world do you think she could be screwing up?

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