http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Eureka.jpg
''Small town, big secrets...''

A one-hour show on the SyFy Channel about the eponymous town and the trouble its genius residents get into.

Eureka is a quiet, small town in the [[TheOtherRainforest Pacific Northwest]] (though "broadening the search" means Oregon) filled with scientists working on the most advanced technology in the world. All this is highly top secret and under the purview of the Department of Defense. And into this quirky, bizarre town comes [[OnlySaneMan Jack Carter]], former U.S. Marshal and newly appointed sheriff of Eureka. Much of the show's humor comes from Carter [[FishOutOfWater attempting to deal]] with the [[MundaneUtility everyday use of futuristic tech]] (including the AI that runs his house), and the ForScience! mentality of the town's population and the disasters this frequently leads to. A good percentage of the disasters stem from the work of the scientists at Global Dynamics, the research and development company in town. It has had at least three different heads of company throughout the show's run, which should tell you [[DangerousWorkplace what kind of a place it is]].

Important characters include Carter's rebellious teenage daughter, Zoe, who is turning out to be [[ObfuscatingStupidity a lot smarter than you might expect at first glance]], and [[{{Badass}} Deputy Jo Lupo]]. For much of the show's run, Carter is involved in a {{UST}} laden LoveTriangle with Allison Blake and Nathan Stark (her ex-husband and one of the aforementioned heads of Global Dynamics-- Allison takes over [[spoiler: after Kim's death leads to Stark's demotion]]). There's also Henry, one of the [[OmnidisciplinaryScientist brilliant minds in town]] and probably Jack's best friend; [[ButtMonkey Fargo]], who designed Jack's Smart House (S.A.R.A.H., who is a character in her own right); and Taggart, who is what happens when you feed Steve Irwin {{paranoia fuel}} and set him loose in a town full of crazies.

Driven by a "MonsterOfTheWeek" science fiction element, the show has featured a different StoryArc stretching loosely over each season. The strong science fiction plots are complemented by the ignorance of Sheriff Carter. In some sense it is like a twisted version of ''TheAndyGriffithShow,'' where Opie is a felonious teenage daughter, Gomer Pyle is a brilliant ex-NASA engineer and Barney Fife is a marine.

Known in the UK as ''A Town Called Eureka'' to avoid confusion with a science programme.
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!!This show provides examples of:

* ActionGirl - Jo.
* AlmightyJanitor - Henry is the town's mechanic. He's also probably the smartest person ''in'' Eureka.
** He now holds the somewhat-more-dignified title of "Mayor"...and has the patch on his greasemonkey jumpsuit to prove it.
** He's also the town coroner, and forensic analyst, and road maintenance man, and telephone repairman, and the entirety of the Fire Department. It's strongly implied he has a lot of other jobs as well. It's revealed in the pilot episode that the patches on his uniform are Velcro'd on, and he carries around dozens of different patches for all the different jobs he does in town.
* ArcWords - "You just have to have faith."
* ArthurDent - Carter is this, and often the OnlySaneMan as well.
* BadassNormal - Borderline; superpowers are generally reserved for antagonists, but Carter, who ends up solving most of the mysteries and taking down most of the bad guys, is an average cop surrounded by supergeniuses, with an ActionGirl sidekick who holds the Army Rangers' all-time record for marksmanship.
* BackForTheDead - As noted below, Kim. ''Twice''.
* BackFromTheDead - Kim. ... Sort of. Not really. But... kinda.
**And repeatedly. Poor Henry. Kim was never main cast, but she has a case of serial BackForTheDead.
*** [[spoiler: She only lasted for an episode and a half this season.]] Poor Henry cried.
* BrotherChuck - Matt Frewer's character simply disappeared between seasons, neatly remedying the need to address any emotional baggage Jo might have in her new relationship.
** Turns out that this was intentional, as he saw that Jo and Zane's rerlationship was growing and didn't want to cause problems. Once Taggart (Frewer's character) returns, he and Jo work through their remaining emotional baggage.
* BuffySpeak - Basically whenever Sheriff Carter is trying to talk about something he doesn't quite understand.
* ButtMonkey - Sheriff Carter is ultimately the one that get his short term memory wiped, coldcocked by his own deputy, is ruled by the memories of another person, is continually belittled and treated with little to no respect by almost everyone and still mocked meanly by everyone but Henry, quite unfairly as well etc., and Fargo is treated like crap by just about everyone in town.
** Considering that Fargo is often at the root of the episode's problem, their behavior toward him may be justified.
** Re: Carter - He strikes ThisTroper more as the ChewToy than the ButtMonkey. You're clearly meant to feel sorry for him each and every time crap happens.
* CassandraTruth - Carter fairly quickly gets a handle on how Eureka operates and to not just dismiss things he sees and intuits as being too crazy to be the truth. Even Henry and Allison take about ''three seasons'' to stop dismissing him as crazy when he asks something or says something strange is going on.
* CatchPhrase - Whenever something goes horribly wrong in front of Carter-which is fairly often-he says "That ''can't'' be good!"
* [=~Chekhov's Gun~=] - And many of its subtropes. Any little interesting bit of technology introduced is almost guaranteed to be A) the cause of the calamity of the week or B) the solution to it.
** Annoyingly averted in one episode with ''fembots'' that were discussed, but didn't show up or have anything to do with the plot at all.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}} - Pretty much everyone in the entire town to some degree, but Taggart is easily the biggest. To give you an idea, in one episode Sheriff Carter finds him naked, about to attack a cell tower with an enormous circular saw, and doesn't consider this to be an indication that anything is out of the ordinary - that's just the sort of thing Taggart ''does''.
* CommonSense - Sheriff Carter is also the source of the blatantly obvious that the brilliant scientists all miss. And near everyone continues to talk to him like an idiot simply because he has to ask about the science behind super secret government research decades ahead of the rest of the world. See ButtMonkey.
* CoolHouse - S.A.R.A.H.
* CrazyPrepared - Taggart tries to be this, but the only ''real'' qualifier is the government of the Town of Eureka. Any organization that has ''resurrection forms'' on file knows it's ready for anything, no matter how weird.
** The city has a library of disaster plans. Tsunami. Missile attack. [[NoodleIncident Genetically Modified Super Intelligent Ferret infestation]].
* CrazySurvivalist - Taggart again. Semi-subverted in that he's actually fairly friendly most of the time, and his CrazySurvivalist behavior is occasionally ''useful''.
* CuriousAsAMonkey - Douglas Fargo [[SchmuckBait has never met a button he didn't push]], and on one occasion when questioned as to ''why'' he decided to activate the mystery device that he found in his pockets he sheepishly replied "ItsWhatIDo."
* DangerousWorkplace - Eureka boasts 5 times the average death toll for a town its size and twice the national average.
* DawsonCasting - In the episode with the isolation environment. Wound up making the "long distance relationship" going on there really creepy. More or less averted by Zoe, however (Jordan Hinson is only about a year older than her character).
** Actually, she's two months ''younger'' than her character. Zoe was born in April 1991, and Jordan Hinson was born in June 1991.
* DeathOfTheHypotenuse - [[spoiler:Nathan Stark, Jack Carter, and Allison Blake were in a [[TriangRelations Type 1 Love Triangle]]. Only two of those characters are [[CleaningUpRomanticLooseEnds still alive]]. Subverted in that Jack's interest in Allison is waning, and Tess came along.]]
** Though it's looking now like [[spoiler:Allison is becoming more interested in Carter, after he hooks up with Tess.]]
* DevilInPlainSight - Beverly Barlowe, the town's therapist who is also [[spoiler:TheMole, before eventually being beamed away by a transporter]].
* DieForOurShip - [[spoiler: Nathan Stark's death]] seems this way, but the actor actually asked to be written off the show.
*DidNotDoTheResearch - The show's fiction is better than its science.
* EverybodyIsSingle - Stark and Blake were married. Then divorced. Then engaged. Then [[spoiler: Stark was dead.]]
* {{Expy}} - Nathan's actor is pretty candid about the fact that the character is more or less [[{{Iron Man}} Tony Stark]], sans armor.
* ExtranormalInstitute - The whole town.
* FakeNationality - Matt Frewer as an Australian.
* FanPreferredCouple - Stark/Carter.
* FoeYay - Stark and Carter. Just... Stark and Carter.
** [[CharacterDevelopment Later on]], anyway. Early in the first season the two seem to genuinely hate eact other.
* ForScience - The ''entire effing town'' except Carter. Which makes Eureka both an AdventureTown and a DangerousWorkplace, with the result that:
----> '''Henry''': "We have twice the national mortality rate."
* HollywoodScience
* HotAmazon - Jo, Sheriff Carter's gun-crazy deputy.
* KarmaHoudini - Several, the most recent being Julia, who despite stealing Jo's identity (and DNA and face), nearly getting her killed, and attempting to get her thrown in the nuthouse so she could live Jo's life, still gets everyone's sympathy, the guy she did this all to pursue, and probably keeps her job.
** Julia nearly died for her folly, plus she repented and helped set things right. She also realized that everything she did to get close to Fargo wasn't necessary, because, in his words, she had him at ''{{Halo}}''.
* KilledOffForReal - Kim [[spoiler: and Stark]].
* LarynxDissonance - SARAH's voice template is Fargo doing a female impression. (At least until Sarah Michelle Gellar's people get back to him!) Out-of-universe, that really ''is'' Neil Grayston (Fargo's actor) doing SARAH's voice.
* LoveMakesYouCrazy - After his girlfriend [[spoiler: dies in the Season 1 finale]], Henry seems to get slightly more unhinged. Season 3 sees him getting better, though.
** ''Slightly''? He [[spoiler: mind wipes Jack, then teams up with Beverley in the season finale. He comes to his senses after realizing what a giant clusterfuck he's caused (and how evil Beverley actually is)]].
** Also, in the episode where Stark gets replicated (see MagnificentBastard), his jealousy over Carter and Allison makes the situation even worse, because the replicants can tell what he's feeling and act accordingly.
** And then there's the episode where Jo [[spoiler: is the victim of a genetic switcharoo, simply so the culprit can get close to Fargo and exploit his crush on Jo to try to hook up with him]].
* MadScientist - Pretty much everyone except Carter, Jo, and Zoe, and Zoe has been leaving her father in the dust since midway through Season 2. But this may have something to do with Carter's IQ being 111 and Zoe's is 155.
* MagicCountdown
* MagnificentBastard - Nathan Stark.
-->"What were you dreaming about when it happened?"
-->"You know. The usual things... wealth... power... control... over everything..."
-->"... You dream about ''world domination''?!"
-->"... Not '''all''' the time."
* TheMillstone - Fargo. If he appears in an episode, it is either to kick off the disaster or to make it worse.
** Starting to become subverted or averted in the most recent season.
* MonsterOfTheWeek
* MST3KMantra - Ninety percent of the "science" is TechnoBabble BS that contradicts real science on nearly every level. Doesn't make the show any less enjoyable, though.
** Best summed up by Carter: "Is it Eureka possible?"
* MundaneUtility - Even in the show's opening credits. Laser lawnmowers, antigravity baby carriages, virtual baseball, jetpacks used to fix broken streetlights, an enormous (referred to as Narnia by Zoe) freezer that can reach 0 Kelvin for food, etc.
** Slightly subverted in that almost none of these are actually seen in use in the series. Most people drive fairly normal cars, live in fairly normal houses, etc. They tend to just have nicer cell phones and sound systems and so on than in the outside world.
*** Maybe because the DOD wants to keep the town a secret. No laser lawnmowers, but you can have a nuclear powered car.
* NothingExcitingEverHappensHere - Inversion; the unusual is normal. The school science fair would probably be stunned by someone entering a baking soda volcano.
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist - What ''doesn't'' Henry do in this town?!
** Which leads to FridgeLogic: [[spoiler: When he goes to prison, who takes over for him?]]
*** Fargo. Apparently.
* OverprotectiveDad - Sheriff Carter.
* PilotMovie
* ProductPlacement - While slightly present since the start, became blatant and omnipresent in season 3. They at least attempt to justify it by throwing in a new boss who implements what causes it in an effort to make the research done in the town more profitable, but ([[http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/080820.html as Real Life Comics nicely captures]]) it's still painful to watch. Especially given that...
** "Here Comes The Suns" is pretty much one long ad for Degree, but this troper liked the [[WriterRevolt over the top way]] it was presented.
*** This troper decidedly didn't, and considered it the episode where the show jumped the Degree-slathered shark. Luckily it seems to have jumped back over for the second half of season three, with nary a stick of Degree in sight, and the product placement having settled back to acceptable, non-ridiculous levels.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld - [[spoiler: well, 107 to be exact, but Eva Thorne/Mary Perkins now ages slowly thanks to her own genetic wackiness + lab experiment gone wrong.]]
* ReedRichardsIsUseless - The entire premise of the show is that a secret city of supergeniuses is constantly working to create fabulous scientific breakthroughs, and their creations often turn into genuinely useful technology that becomes commonplace in the town (like a gel that can instantly extinguish all the fire in a blazing house). None of this is ever extended to the outside world. But then, it is a theoretically secret facility under DOD direction, so maybe the government just sits on the tech.
** It has been stated that there are covert ongoing government missions to the Moon and Mars, indicating that some of the tech is being used...
*** It's also been implied that [[spoiler: the ''atomic bomb'' was developed in Eureka in the ''thirties'']], [[spoiler: we actually went to the moon in 1962]], and that [[spoiler: the moon rocks that are on display at the National Air and Space Museum are, in fact, fake.]]
** Considering that a lot of the plots of ''Eureka'' come from unforeseen side effects in the various new technologies, the DOD is most likely sitting on the tech for a very good reason. Namely, so that the new speakers that were developed in the town don't cause people to turn into berserkers or their heads explode or something, stuff like that.
** It's been stated that nearly every scientific breakthrough since the thirties has come from Eureka. Most of the technologies they have just need to become cost effective before the rest of the world can afford them (at one point it's stated that they have the cure for the common cold, but it costs about a million dollars whereas chicken soup still sells for under $5)
* ResetButton: Some times pushed ([[spoiler: Carter getting his job back]]) (but the episodes title spoiled that one), other times avoided. ([[spoiler: Stark's death, so far at least.]]) Also used at the end of season one, which is utterly heartbreaking because it's one of the few times you don't ''want'' the button to be pushed.
* SchizoTech - Eureka is set in the present, but with next generation technology because they invent all of it.
* TheSheriff - Jack Carter, who used to be a USMarshal.
* SupremeChef - Vincent. [[{{Polaris}} This Troper]] would kill for the chance to actually eat at Cafe Diem.
** At San Diego's Comic Con International in 2009 they turned a local restaurant into a Cafe Diem. Sadly, they did not have any of Vincent's unique cuisine, which made it a disappointment.
* TearJerker - More than once. "Once in a Lifetime" is particularly poignant.
* TemporalParadox
* TownWithADarkSecret / QuirkyTown
* TheUmbridge - Season 3 introduces Frances Fisher as "Fixer" Eva Thorne, who's living up to the name in spades.
* WomenInRefrigerators - We meet Kim in episode 3 of season one; we don't see her again until she gets KilledOffForReal in the season finale, sending Henry off the deep end for the entirety of season two.
* TheWoobie - Henry. Nothing ever seems to go right for Henry, the hardest working person in the town.
** While Jack is more of the ButtMonkey / ChewToy -- i.e. most of the things that go wrong for him are played for laughs -- he definitely has his woobie moments. The ending of "Unpredictable" is kind of heartbreaking: Allison is reconnecting with Nathan, his ex-wife is taking Zoe back to L.A. with her, and he's all alone in the middle of a crowded room.

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Specific Episode Tropes Include:
* AIIsACrapshoot - "H.O.U.S.E. Rules"
* BottleEpisode - "H.O.U.S.E. Rules" and "A Night In Global Dynamics."
* ChildfreeIsNotAllowed - Your wife doesn't want kids? Just clone a new wife who will be more compliant!
* ClipShow - "You Don't Know Jack"
* DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep - "Right as Raynes"
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt - Frequently. "Once in a Lifetime" and "I Do Over" are probably the best examples.
* EverybodyMustGetStoned - "Purple Haze"
* FreakLabAccident
* FreakyFriday - "Your Face Or Mine"
* LaserGuidedAmnesia
* LoveIsInTheAir - "Maneater"
* MentalTimeTravel
* {{Nanomachines}}
* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain - Dodged, sort of-- the usual "at one time" caveat
* PhlebotinumInducedStupidity - "E = MC...?"
* PutOnABus- Midseason 3 finale, literally [[spoiler: Eva]]. This troper still wants to know why a town that's isolated from everyone else suddenly has Greyhound going out of town!
**This troper assumes that it is the same Greyhound that brought Zoe back to Eureka in Season 1.
*** Plus, the town isn't really isolated from anything. GD has it's own invisibility-shield, but the town per se is as open as any other deep-in-the-woods-community. Carter and Zoe stumbling across it in the pilot is a good example.
** For awhile it seemed like Taggart was this, but previews confirm he's coming back in the next episode.
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots - Raynes in episode 8. Later on there was an episode dedicated to Ridiculously Canine Robots.
** Sheriff Andy. [[DontExplainTheJoke He's an android, get it]]?
*** [[DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep Sounds familiar.]]
** The Kim-from-space probably counts.
* RubberBandHistory - The season 1 finale
* ScienceFair - And in Eureka, this is SeriousBusiness.
* ShoutOut An episode dealing with alchemy had the [[FullMetalAlchemist human transmutation circle]] on a blackboard in the background.
** The clean white testing environment Carter tackles in a recent episode brings the [[{{Portal}} Aperture Science Enrichment Center]] to mind.
** ''[[TheAndyGriffithShow Sheriff Andy]]''. Carter later references his own "Sheriff Andy Charm."
** "It's Not Easy Being Green": [[ThreeHundred "This...is...EUREKA!!!"]]
** "Duck Duck Goose": In the extreme foreground as the Starks are discussing Kevin, the hand from T2 can be seen in the original glass dome. Guess who Henry played?
** "Never go in against an Australian [[ThePrincessBride when death is on the line!]]"
* SingleIssuePsychology
* SitcomArchnemesis - Fargo seems to find a new one of these once every few episodes. Often they're the first victim of the [[MonsterOfTheWeek disaster of the week]].
* SomeoneHasToDie - Season three episode 'I Do Over' - [[spoiler:It was Stark]]
* SubvertedTrope and AvertedTrope - Sheriff Andy of "Welcome Back, Carter" is, unlike most robot replacements: 1. Not evil (but characters think this is what Carter is thinking when he is initially speculative of him), 2. Not incompetent, 3. While he preforms a heroic sacrifice, he manages to not die in it (but the audience is faked out about it for a few seconds), 4. Not that hostile with his predecessor (particularly by the end of the episode).
* SuperSerum - "[=MPG=]" makes its user a FragileSpeedster / BigEater
* YouAreWithMe - The third-season episode "I Do Over" does this to great effect.

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