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 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 Jack Carter, former U.S. Marshal and newly appointed sheriff of Eureka. Much of the show's humor comes from Carter attempting to deal with the everyday use of futuristic tech (including the AI that runs his house), and the For Science 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 what kind of a place it is.Important characters include Carter's rebellious teenage daughter, Zoe, who is turning out to be a lot smarter than you might expect at first glance, and Deputy Jo Lupo. For much of the show's run, Carter is involved in a UST laden Love Triangle with Allison Blake and Nathan Stark (her ex-husband and one of the aforementioned heads of Global Dynamics— Allison takes over after Kim's death leads to Stark's demotion). There's also Henry, one of the brilliant minds in town and probably Jack's best friend; 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 "Monster of the Week" science fiction element, the show has featured a different Story Arc 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 The Andy Griffith Show, where Opie is a felonious teenage daughter, Gomer Pyle is a brilliant ex-NASA engineer and Barney Fife is a marine (Later, Barney is a Ridiculously Human Robot).Known in the UK as A Town Called Eureka to avoid confusion with a science programme. Not to be confused with a story about Sky SurfingGiant Mecha called Eureka Seven.During season 4, other shows on the Syfy Network (namely, Warehouse 13 and Alphas) were eventually established as being part of the same fictional universe as Eureka (the "Syfy-verse").Now has a character sheet.On August 8th, 2011 it was announced that the show would be ending after five seasons.
This show provides examples of:
Acquired Situational Narcissism: Fargo's Alternate Timeline self as the head of GD. Main timeline Fargo almost immediately starts doing the same thing, but the others have none of it.
Aesop Amnesia: While not a specifically-stated aesop, there is a lesson that Carter never seems to learn. No matter how many situations he could have gotten himself out of and saved the day much more easily by just carrying a pocket knife, let alone something like a Swiss Army knife, he never does. He's a former US Marshal and a sheriff, and yet he doesn't carry a basic tool that many adult men do and he never thinks to.
For the rest of the scientists (Allison and Henry being the most consistent offenders), they never quite learn to not just blow Jack off with "It's not scientifically possible."
A.I. Is a Crapshoot: SARAH in several episodes. A mild case in that she isn't so much evil as naive but well-meaning and somewhat overprotective.
In one episode she programmed Deputy Andy to love her - while he was connected to the GD mainframe. As per the norm, It Got Worse and Hilarity Ensues, making this trope evident for the entire town.
Almighty Janitor: 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 grease-monkey 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.
Alternate Timeline: The 4th season premier had Carter, Henry, Fargo, Allison, and Jo sent back to 1947 through some crazy sunspot shenanigans (and some tinkering from resident savant Kevin). After messing around in the past for a while, they got help from one of the founders and were able to return. But, they accidentally took said founder back with them. Now, Jo's entire relationship with Zane has been wiped from existence and she's head of GD security, Henry is married to a character (whose name he can't remember) introduced just prior to their adventure, Allison's son Kevin is no longer autistic and she's been reduced to head of GD's medical department, Tess is no longer gone, Fargo is the head of Global Dynamics, and the Archimedes statue is made of bronze instead of granite. They're made every effort to avert the Reset Button, too, including getting rid of the device that caused it.
To say nothing of the Season 1 finale, which begins with everything peachy; Carter and Allison married, Jo and Taggart in a relationship, and Henry and Kim happy together. Then this all turns out to be an alternate timeline created when Henry prevented Kim's death, and Carter has to personally hit the Reset Button in order to save the universe. This doubles as Henry's Start of Darkness for his role as Season 2's Big Bad.
Ambiguously Brown: Allison is played by Salli Richardson-Whitfield, whose mother is African-American and father Irish-Italian.
Ambiguously Gay: Vincent. At least, they haven't come flat-out and said it yet...
And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Season 2 DVD of Eureka features "Live Smart, Eureka" PSAs, helping to keep common sense a little more common.
Animesque: The last section of the 2011 Christmas special has anime versions of the characters and the giant snow ninja they're fighting.
Badass Normal: 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 a former US Marshall surrounded by super-geniuses, with an Action Girl sidekick who holds the Army Rangers' all-time record for marksmanship.
And repeatedly. Poor Henry. Kim was never in the main cast, but she has a case of serial Back for the Dead.
She only lasted for an episode and a half this season. Poor Henry cried.
Becoming the Mask: Fargo starts to go through this in the fourth season. Time travel has made him head of GD, but since he never actually got the position himself he doesn't act like it. Then a hallucination of a little girl who beat him up as a kid tells him to grow a pair, so he does.
In the same epsiode the General tells Fargo that he was place in that position of power to be the Department of Defence's puppet.
Bedmate Reveal: In the season one finale, Carter wakes up next to a very pregnant Allison due to the alternate timeline.
Big Bad: Beverly Barlowe is about the closest thing this show has to one.
Bigger Bad: The "Consortium", the shadowy conspiracy Beverly reports to.
Bigger Is Better in Bed: Carter is implied to be rather well-endowed, much to Stark's dismay. During the period where the love triangle between Carter, Allison, and Stark was in full swing, Carter is doused with toxins, requiring him to strip and be decontaminated in public, which actually amuses Stark to no end... until Carter's shorts come off.
There's also Tess and Nathan Stark, the latter having actually been dead, but they were hallucinations.
Butt Monkey: Fargo. He is treated like crap by just about everyone in town, and if something bad happens there's a good chance it'll come find him. Then again, considering that he's often responsible for said problems, one might consider this Laser-Guided Karma.
While visiting Warehouse 13 in a crossover episode an out of control AI pulls his GD profile and remarks, "Your GD personnel file contains the phrase 'inappropriately pushed button' 37 times."
In Season 4, Fargo notices that the alternate universe him was, in his own words, "...kind of a jerk!". Perhaps without the other characters around him to ground him, this is what he'd end up as.
Carter comes close, but might be intended to be more of a Chew Toy than the Butt Monkey. You're clearly meant to feel sorry for everything he's put through, while Fargo's problems are almost always played for laughs.
Cassandra Truth: Carter quickly gets a handle on how Eureka operates and learns not to dismiss things he sees and intuits as being too crazy to be the truth. Yet, despite having an excellent track record of pinning down problems, no one believes him at first. 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.
Carter has his own version of this often. While it's true that the scientists will always say "It's not possible for my experiment to have done that!" regardless of whether it did or not, he never seems to be able to distinguish between "It's not possible my experiment did this because it's scientifically impossible for what I'm doing to cause that effect" (it's not their fault) and "It's not possible my experiment did this because I'm in complete control and nothing could ever possibly go wrong!" (it's almost certainly their fault). The second half of season four actually seems to be having some success mixing and matching both of these with only mild forms of the above bullet point.
Catch Phrase: Whenever something goes horribly wrong in front of Carter-which is fairly often-he says "That can't be good!" And when it actually gets worse, which it does; "You have got to be kidding me!"
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.
A recent episode was a veritable Chekhov's Double Barrel, when both A and B were introduced in the same scene.
Frustratingly averted in one episode with Fembots that were discussed, but didn't show up or have anything to do with the plot at all.
Chew Toy: Carter. He's always in the middle of whatever is messing with the town, and he suffers for it.
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. It's to the point that, in an episode where everyone in town is being driven insane by mutated pollen, Carter can't tell whether Taggart is being affected or not, because he already acts like that anyway.
Carter: Taggert. You're naked. Taggert:Au naturelle. Carter: May I ask why? Taggert: Why not?
Cool Old Guy: It's easy to forget that Henry is implied to be a fair bit older than many of the other characters, precisely because he is so cool and easy-to-relate-to. Stark refers to Henry as being his teacher, which while not necessarily implying a large age gap, indicates that Henry was already an established scientist of skill and note when Nathan was still just starting out.
Comedic Sociopathy: The behavior-altering music in "Reprise" varies between this, harmless fun, and genuine drama.
Cosmic Retcon: In the Season 4 premiere, the original series timeline is effectively permanently erased. The past three years of plot, drama, and character development? Poof, gone. Especially noticeable with Zane, who outright reverted to his initial characterization (and is working his way back).
Interestingly though, something only the science geeks would get the hint that the original 3 seasons were set in the WRONG universe. Putting aside the Warehouse 13 crossover, but the concept of the Einstein-Rosen-Podowski bridge was always referred to as the Einstein-Grant bridge in Eureka until they brought the founder to the future in season 4.
Crazy Prepared: 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.
Crazy Survivalist: Taggart again. Semi-subverted in that he's actually fairly friendly most of the time, and his Crazy Survivalist behavior is occasionally useful. Really, his first few episodes made him seem like a stock one of these that had somehow snuck into Eureka by mistake, but he quickly began showing traits of his intelligence, multiple doctorates, and even nerdiness. He's just weird because most Eureka scientists are weird about their specialty, and his is animal behavior/biology/Santaology.
According to the Warehouse 13 crossover episode, his personnel report includes the phrase "inappropriately pushed button" 38 times.
Unfortunately that is most likely alternate Fargo's record. No telling if the Fargo we know has a different count.
Daddy's Girl: Zoe. Although she and her father will have their fights and bickering, that's no doubt that Carter would do anything to ensure Zoe's happiness.
Dangerous Workplace: Eureka boasts 5 times the average death toll for a town its size and twice the national average.
Dawson Casting: In the episode with the isolation environment. Wound up making the "long distance relationship" going on there really creepy. Completely averted by Zoe, however (Jordan Hinson is actually about two months younger than her character).
Death of the Hypotenuse: Nathan Stark, Jack Carter, and Allison Blake were in a Type 1 Love Triangle. Only two of those characters are still alive. Then Tess formed the third point for a while, but in the fourth season Jack and Allison committed to each other.
Devil in Plain Sight: Beverly Barlowe, the town's therapist who is also The Mole, before disappearing for a couple seasons and some time travel.
Dude, Where's My Respect?: Sheriff Carter gets no respect for the first 2 or three seasons, even when he's the one who ultimately saved the town from the problem of the week most episodes. Instead, they opt to point and laugh at him for not knowing that OLSN stands for Overly Long Scientific Name. Its only later on that they begin to take his ideas and opinions seriously.
Dumbass Has a Point: While he is not stupid, Sheriff Carter is a man of average intelligence in a town full of super-geniuses, and is often on the receiving end of this.
Eureka Moment: Virtually every episode involves Carter realizing how to fix the problem.
Even The Gay Guy Wants Her: When a hapless inventor attains god-like power He kisses Beverly Barlowe. Several witnesses mention how they've always wished they could do that. Including Vincent who says, "Even I've thought about it."
Everybody is Single: Stark and Blake were married. Then divorced. Then engaged. Then Stark was dead.
Subverted with Henry in the fourth season. Time travel antics have made it so he's married to a woman whose name he doesn't remember.
Nathan's actor is pretty candid about the fact that the character is more or less Tony Stark, sans armor.
There's quite a bit of Jack O'Neill about Carter... again starting with the name. (Though he's a lot less bitter.)
Fargo has a little bit of Peter Parker to him, even to the point of being the wisecracking nerd that it seems like the other superheroes... er, scientists barely tolerate. Bonus points for him following Stark around like a puppy during the period where Spider-Man was doing the same with Iron Man.
Fake Nationality: Canadian/American Matt Frewer as an Australian. Conversely, James Callis and Chris Gauthier are English; Colin Ferguson, Erica Cerra, Niall Matter and Neil Grayston are all Canadian. They all play American characters.
Game of Nerds: Inverted. Non-nerd Carter is the baseball fanatic, and his suggestion of a town baseball league initially goes over like a lead balloon.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: In "Momstrocity", Fargo's tent is controlled by a AI named Buffy with a female voice. Due to the problem of the week, she would like Fargo to stay inside of her.
In "Oh Little Town" Carter confronts Vincent about the food he stole top secret dangerous technology to create.
Carter: FRUITCAKE!!! Vincent: I beg your pardon.
Carter attempts to jump through a closing-up wall modeled after a spaceship's hull, gets the tie he's been forced to wear caught, and is in danger of actually being choked to death. When Allison asks what's wrong, he answers with a strangled "I'm in deep ship". Reportedly, actor Colin Ferguson was annoyed at Eureka for constantly trying to slip crap past the censors and refused to do another take, actually making the line sound more like he really swore.
A pretty blatant episode, and an indication that some of the Insufferable Genius characters are obviously trying to provoke these reactions from Carter on purpose:
"Can't a man masticate in peace?"
"Not in public!"
"''It means chew!"
Gone Horribly Right: Pretty much every single experiment causes disaster when it succeeds. Unless it's ...
Grand Theft Me: Beverly takes over Allison's body with some sort of transmitter embedded in her brain, as a plot to download Eureka's research archive as well as do some other unspecified sabotage.
When Carter's ex-wife, sister, and sister's boyfriend show up and interact with Eureka technology/GD, no one even bats an eye. They could have signed a non-disclosure agreement off-screen, but that's bordering on Fan Wank, and it's a major shift from the paranoia in the pilot. The sister's boyfriend, at least, is a brilliant scientist in his own right, but there's no indication he's familiar with the town.
Historical In-Joke: When Henry was explaining the device that brought them to '47, he referred to a theory worked on by Einstein and Dr. Grant regarding the connection of two points of space/time that Henry referred to as the "Einstein-Grant" bridge. Since Grant got jumped to 2010 by the end of the episode, that gives them call to refer to it as we all know it, the "Einstein-Rosen" bridge.
Holding Back the Phlebotinum: The whole town. Though a lot of it is experimental tech, there is an equal amount of fantastic gadgets that are completely safe yet haven't made it outside the town. One episode justifies this as simply a matter of cost: they can cure the common cold, but it costs $6 million while a bowl of chicken soup costs $5.
Hot Amazon: Jo, Sheriff Carter's gun-crazy deputy.
Hot Mom: Allison Blake could still pass for Elisa Maza.
In Spite of a Nail: The Alternate Timeline in the fourth season, despite removing a key figure in Eureka's founding altogether, has changed almost nothing. In fact, all the characters' lives actually seem to be better for it. There is the problem of Jo having never started a relationship with Zane in this timeline, but that's balanced out by her now being in charge of GD security.
Henry lampshades one of the instances, pointing that no one knows what causes autism in the first place, so it's impossible to figure out how that changed.
Fargo's new position also turns out to be because of his grandfather. While his grandfather was put in stasis in the old timeline, in the new timeline he was apparently a very respected scientist (presumably the credit his partner got went to him as it should have). Fargo is implied to have ridden his grandfather's name to success (before past!timeline Fargo replaced him).
Jossed: A common fan theory held that Nathan wasn't killed in the time machine, but was rather sent to another time or dimension and is going to return. When he does return, he says that this was exactly the case. Then it turns out that he was just a hallucination and that Nathan hadn't really returned.
Just Friends: Allison/Jack. Particularly discussed in the episode Stoned, after years of sporadic relationship teasing that was getting wearisome for some by that point (and season 4 had seemed to stress the just friends angle). How things developed afterwards?.
Karma Houdini: 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.
She's also supposedly on suspension/probation, though that hasn't had any noticeable effect on anything.
In the Alternate Timeline, she's rich and married to an astronaut. Take that as you will.
Lampshade Hanging: In the 2011 Holiday episode, which involves the cast being in several animation styles, SARAH epilogues on the show and talks about the questionable canon status of the episode.
SARAH: Some of you may wonder if this animated tale is true. You can believe it. Or not. But you did hear it from a talking house, so anything's possible.
Larynx Dissonance: 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.
Carter: A hypothetical guy falls maybe fifty feet, lands flat on the ground, and then another guy weighing 180 falls, and lands on top of him. Okay, what is the chance of the hypothetical guy getting up and walking away? [...]
Henry: Look, this hypothetical guy: is that you?
Carter: No. I landed on the hypothetical guy, though.
Love Is in the Air: An ancient spore causes hormones to go wacky in Eureka's men. The men are left behaving normally, but the women are left all turned on like crazy. For at least the first half, the only man the women see as super-desirable is Sheriff Carter, of course. Hilarity Ensues. It's shown later in the episode that if the women get their man, Death by Sex will occur.
Love Makes You Crazy: After his girlfriend dies in the Season 1 finale, Henry seems to get slightly more unhinged. Season 3 sees him getting better, though.
Also, in the episode where Stark gets replicated (see Magnificent Bastard), 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 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.
Love Triangle: This series seems to love these. It started with Stark/Carter/Allison, then Tess took over for Stark, and that's just Carter. With the new season, Tess gets taken off the bus, then put back on, Carter finally kisses Allison, but now that Eureka founder Dr. Grant is here to stay from 1947, it's sliding towards Carter/Allison/Grant.
As of "I'll Be Seeing You", resolved, at least for the time being, with Grant's departure from Eureka.
And as of "Stoned", Carter's daughter Zoe gets a Type 4 of her very own now that she's hooked up with Zane.
Evolves into a full-fledged triangle as of "I'll Be Seeing You", as Jo and Zane share a passionate if spontaneous kiss less than a minute before Zoe enters the room.
Not to mention passionately sharing electrolytes in Carter's guest room, according to SARAH.
Season 4.5 sees the development of yet another triangle: Fargo/Parrish/Marten.
Mad Scientist: 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.
TAGGERT! Oh god, Taggert. He does the craziest things in town (tranqing Carter and stuffing him into a cage, anyone?)
Major Injury Underreaction: Andy reacts to the various accidents that befall him with what can be summed up as a "Isn't that something?" attitude. Of course, he is a robot.
"Oh, I seem to have caught fire."
"My software indicates I should acknowledge my physical injuries, OWWWWWWWWWWW"
The Millstone: Fargo. If he appears in an episode, it is either to kick off the disaster or to make it worse.
Starts to become subverted in season 4. Sorta. Now it's his his Alternate Timeline self, whom he's replaced, that is causing the problems by virtue of Fargo having none of that Fargo's memories.
Mundane Utility: Even in the show's opening credits. Laser lawnmowers, antigravity baby carriages, virtual baseball, jetpacks used to fix broken streetlights, an enormous freezer (referred to as Narnia by Zoe) 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.
No Respect Guy: Fargo, although his new job is making him become far more responsible.
Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Inversion; the unusual is normal. The school science fair would probably be stunned by someone entering a baking soda volcano. These people annually race rockets around the moon!
Sheriff Carter was floored when Andy told him that somebody robbed a bank. He was so used to the disaster of the week being a "quantum runaway something or other" which threatened to destroy the town that the thought of a simple bank robbery thrilled him to no end. Of course, it then turned out that the entire bank was supposedly stolen, building and all.
The Nth Doctor: The robot Sheriff-later-Deputy Andy was played in his first two appearances by Ty Olsson. In "The Story of O2", he's replaced by Kavan Smith, better known as Evan Lorne in Stargate Atlantis. He changed his appearance. He likes the new cheekbones.
An episode actually had SARAH determine that if Carter and Henry left town, it would almost certainly be destroyed.
Also subverted in one episode where most of the population of Eureka gets converted into idiots, including Henry. Gathering everyone in Global Dynamics who hasn't been affected to solve the Crisis Of The Week results in a "chemist, a botanist, a math theorist, and a...lepipotamus*
" being tasked with repairing the particle shielding on an experiment that simulates the Big Bang before it goes off. Unsurprisingly, none of them has a clue about theoretical astrophysics or string theory. They do manage to solve the idiocy problem, though.
Pretty much all of the main character scientists fit this role, knowing whatever that week's episode requires them too, with the exception of Taggert. With one or two exceptions, the writers have been pretty good about generally confining his area of expertise to biology. Most suspects of the mystery of the week also avert this, since whodunnits get much harder to solve when everyone is an expert at everything and therefore any one of the suspects could've done it.
Most of the people who do this actually have some excuse, at least. Henry is easily the oldest of the main cast, meaning he's had more time to accumulate the knowledge necessary to be omnidisciplinary. Stark and Allison, both having prominent positions in GD (Allison even before she became head of GD) would have numerous projects explained to them by specialists, so all it would really require is a good memory to be familiar with the basic aspects of most fields of study.
Once an Episode: A charred corpse or the lines "We'll have to evacuate the town" or "It will leave Eureka a mile-deep crater."
"Get me a list of everyone working in [insert field here]" and Henry simplifying his Techno Babble regarding that week's deadly gizmo using a simile also qualify.
Only Sane Man: Sheriff Carter. It's later implied that the security/law officers are this in every town of scientists.
Plot Armour: Worn by Carter, lampshaded by Sheriff Andy
Sheriff Andy to Carter: I have recalculated it. Seems the odds are better when you are around.
Product Placement: 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 (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.
Puppet King: Mansfield implies that Fargo was made the head of GD because he would play ball, and warns Fargo that he can easily be replaced. Then again, Mansfield may believe this is just what the position is.
Taggart, who got on the bus, came back, then got back on again.
Done literally with Eva in season 3.
Double Subverted with Tess. She takes a job in Australia, and Carter is invited to come along (which the viewers know he won't). Next season, she's broken up with him, and it seems she's on the bus... until Carter and company accidentally screw up the timeline, making it so Tess never left and is in fact moving in with Jack. Except then, Jack puts her back on the bus because the whole time travel thing has made their relationship awkward and he's convinced it won't work.
Really 700 Years Old: 107 to be exact, but Eva Thorne/Mary Perkins now ages slowly thanks to her own genetic wackiness + lab experiment gone wrong.
Reed Richards Is Useless: The entire premise of the show is that a secret city of supergeniuses is constantly working to create fabulous scientific breakthroughs. They're said to be responsible for every technological breakthrough since the thirties, but their tech is still decades beyond the rest of the world.
Also, it's usually Carter (who, while a reasonably bright guy, is still the dumbest guy in town by virtue of literally everyone, his own daughter included, being a world-class genius) who has to solve the problem of the week, because the brainiacs are either A) too busy being victimized by it, B) trying to come up with something sciencey instead of just hitting it with a hammer, or C) the person who created the experiment that caused the problem, who refuses to believe their brilliant idea could possibly go wrong.
Reluctant Mad Scientist: This issue pops up in the show now and again. Several characters (Henry and Dr. Grant, for example) express distaste at how Global Dynamics, which is funded primarily by the DOD, seems to be more interested in turning out strategic advantages rather than focusing on scientific advancement to prevent war per the spirit on which the town was founded. Other characters (Nathan and Allison) are quick to point out that such work would not exist without the funding the DOD provides, and thus they must be mad scientists if they want to pursue work which will benefit mankind as a whole.
Reset Button: Zig-zagged. If Carter ever loses his job, or looks like he will, the button will be pressed. The show makes no attempt to disguise this, having literally titled one of their episodes "Welcome Back Carter" right after the one where Carter was fired. At other times, it's avoided when you wouldn't think so (Stark's death, for example, since he asked to be written out). 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.
Surprisingly averted in the fourth season. Carter and friends accidentally create an Alternate Timeline, and the viewer is convinced the button will be pushed. Instead, events keep conspiring to prevent the button from being pushed, so this new timeline is here to stay.
Ridiculously Human Robots: Raynes in episode 8. The dog robots in the second season. Sheriff Andy. The Kim-from-space probably counts as a borderline example; she's a living computer.
A minor one that spans the entire series is Carter buying someone something as a gift, only for them to get one as a gift from someone else before he has a chance to present it.
or an even better, super-high-tech version of his gift. The gag reaches its crescendo during Alison's baby shower, where Jack removes one item after another from his gift basket as someone else presents it to Alison, until finally: "and my gift to you is...a basket!"
Jack's Jeep keeps getting destroyed. How many vehicles can be smashed, blown up, sucked into tornadoes, protenated (read:melted), etc. before the budget gets maxed out?
Also technically GD as it has been seen in the series since then. Considering the pilot had little more than a single hallway that connected all the sections (including the top secret section 5) together.
Left the Background Music On: during the episode Games People Play (Season 2 Episode 4) Carter and Zoe make up in a heart touching moment complete with accompanying music, quickly followed by this:
Carter: Sarah what are you doing?
S.A.R.A.H: That was such a beautiful moment, I felt musical accompaniment seemed appropriate.
Zane: We'll use SARAH to slip into the back-door of GD. Fargo: Uh, we? Zane: Once a back-door link is established, there's nothing I won't have access to. Fargo: Uh, I think you mean there will be nothing that I have access to. Jo: Boys, there is plenty of back-door access for everyone! (awkward pause) Jo: That didn't come out right.
In the Pilot
Sheriff Cobb: (hangs up the phone) That was Ned Carver. He claims aliens abducted some of his cattle again, so... Jo: Tell him to call me when they move on to anal probes. [Cobb and Zoe stare] Jo: Wait, um... that didn't come out right.
In Founder's Day
Dr. Grant: There's a woman in the brig with some injuries you should take a look at. Also, there's a naked man in there for some reason. Allison: I'll go take a look. (beat) Allison: At the injuries, not the naked guy. Dr. Grant: I'm glad you clarified.
Holly Marten gets three in a row in Of Mites And Men, referring to slipping through a security door that got stuck partly open.
Holly: I can do eight inches! I have very limber joints! (later, referring to getting stuck halfway through the door) Is it too late to cover myself in something slippery?
This, from Jo:
"I was tangled up with Zane... With his thing... With his pardon."
Tyrant Takes The Helm: Season 3 introduces Frances Fisher as "Fixer" Eva Thorne, who at first lived up to the role in spades, then became more sympathetic as we got into her motivations.
Uncanny Valley: The first segment of the Christmas Episode.
Wham Episode: "Founder's Day". An odd case of one being used as a season premiere rather than a season finale.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Former Sheriff Cobb. Appears for the pilot, gives Carter his job, and is never heard from again.
Women In Refrigerators: We meet Kim in episode 3 of season one; we don't see her again until she gets Killed Off for Real in the season finale, sending Henry off the deep end for the entirety of season two.
Wrote The Book: Allison literally wrote the book on space medicine... or at least her alternate-universe counterpart did, which is almost as good. (She apparently did all the same research, she just never got around to publishing her thesis.)
Episode-specific tropes
Actor Allusion: Two in "The Ex-Files". An obvious one is when Dr. Grant, played by James Callis, claims that he's hallucinating "a leggy blond in a slinky, red dress"; a nod to his role as Dr. Gaius Baltar in the remake of Battlestar Galactica who really was followed around by such a hallucination. A subtler one occurs when Carter calls his hallucination of Nathan Stark "undead" leading it to reply "Nope, not a vampire". Ed Quinn appeared as a vampire on True Blood for a few episodes after leaving the show.
Averted with Sheriff Andy, Carter's robot replacement. He's not evil (but characters think this is what Carter is thinking when he is initially skeptical of him), not hostile to his predecessor (or anyone for that matter), not incompetent (though too stuck on the rules to do Carter's job right), and performs a Heroic Sacrifice without dying (but the audience is faked out about it for a few seconds).
Martha, initially, but she gets better.
Almost Out Of Oxygen: In "Liftoff", Fargo and Zane are stuck in space in a capsule which only has emergency life support. Then they need to use their oxygen tank as an ersatz rocket to avoid a collision with the International Space Station, so they have even less time than the "emergency" amount...
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Carter interrupts an experiment, beats up a scientist, and messes up the experiment a little. the experiment in question involves time travel, so it's Serious Business.
Carter: Oh crap.
Grant: That's right, and now I lost my hat!
Carter: Your hat?!
Art Shift: The 2011 Christmas special is one long series of art shifts, thanks to a interactive storybook and a massive photon generator.
Bottle Episode: "H.O.U.S.E. Rules" and "A Night In Global Dynamics."
Cast From Hitpoints: In 'Liftoff', how do you move your spacecraft without any propulsion? Vent the oxygen!
Christmas Episode: "O Little Town", which aired between the two halves of season 4, involves the town shrinking, a flying sleigh with holographic reindeer, and a scientist who is heavily implied to be the real Santa. Though, given its Framing Device, Carter is almost certainly making some of it up.
Credits Gag: The first episode of season four has a sepia tone and forties style music.
Crowd Song: Henry organizes one as a romantic gesture in "Stoned" on Fargo's advice.
Clip Show: "You Don't Know Jack," although it mostly wasn't clips.
Brilliantly Played With/Subverted in "This one time at space camp..." It looks like it's going to be one of these, since they have a memory retrieval device, but it's only used in the B plot to flesh out the back-stories of Fargo, Zane, and Lupo, by looking at their childhoods. For the A plot, almost no old footage is shown, they mostly talk about, and do things related to past events, because thanks to an accident with aforementioned device Jack's memories are overriding their Relationship Supervisor's personality.
That's it?
What were you expecting, the Spanish inquisition?
Close Enough Timeline: Apparently the removal of one of Eureka's founders causes such oddities as a break up no longer occurring, one person no longer being autistic (this one is even lampshaded how strange this is when no one knows the cause in the first place, let alone how it is prevented), and the head of Global Dynamics is now someone who has almost destroyed the townon a number of occasions (and manages to do so again by virtue of his own ignorance of the experiments he was running in the new timeline, which required close supervision).
Closer Than They Appear: "One Giant Leap" has a closer-than-it-appears shot of a black hole in Carter's jeep's rear view mirror.
Cloning Blues: Stark being replicated by nanobots, as in Jo's words, "A whole lot of Starks!".
Comedic Sociopathy: The behavior-altering music in "Reprise" varies between this, harmless fun, and genuine drama.
Compound Interest Time Travel Gambit: When Grant goes back in time in the mid-season finale, he takes the opportunity to buy some stock to invoke this trope. 63 years later, he's "rolling in it."
Deliberate Values Dissonance: Hand waved away and used at the same time. When time traveling to 1947 it is said that Eureka was always "progressive" (hence why no one notes the varied races of the cast), but when a character is brought back with them, he thinks Smoking Is Cool (as long as you don't have asthma).
Also subverted by Henry, who points out that progressive or not, no one looks twice at a Black mechanic.
Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Everyone in "The Ex-Files" are having hallucinations related to their various unresolved issues. Jo, finally having had enough of the past version of Zane haunting her, tells her hallucination that they never worked as a couple and gives back the engagement ring he gave her... only to realize too late that this is the real Zane she's confessed to. He's rather surprised she has his grandmother's ring.
Distracted by the Sexy: Jo's in a very sexy Little Black Dress. Fargo hasn't noticed that the entire audience for Thatcher's Nobel has disappeared due to technical difficulties.
Earthquake Machine: Zane designed a resonance device like the one Nikola Tesla claimed to have built. It was used by the bad guys to steal the below-mentioned EMP gun.
Extended Disarming: Non-weapon variant during the Horrible Camping Trip in "Momstrosity", when Jack insists on a good old-fashioned no-technology camping trip. Put any devices you're carrying in the box, Fargo.
Framing Device: "O Little Town" is framed as a story Carter is telling a bunch of kids, which might explain some of its more outlandish twists.
Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: SARAH x Andy (Carter's house and robot deputy sheriff) and (in one interpretation) Tiny x Emo (massiveSpider Tank space probe and toy robot) in "Momstrosity." (In the other interpretation, Tiny sees Emo as her son, putting that entire plot smack in Mama Bear territory, which fits better with the episode title.)
Idiot Ball: Allison grabs this hard in "The Story of O2". In a move worthy of Cracked, she uses an experimental compound designed to terraform Mars to enhance her son Kevin's rocket fuel so he'll win a race. No points for guessing what happens.
Indy Escape: The season 4 Christmas special features Carter running away from a gigantic Christmas ornament.
Kick the Dog: Played straight in "One Giant Leap", then pulled back. When the Astraeus mission is finally about to begin, Fargo taunts Dr. Parrish about how much it must suck to be left out of being the first humans on Titan. In a surprisingly humanizing moment for the otherwise mustache-twisting character, we get this:
Fargo: Too late for you, Parrish! Must be tough, not being a pioneer!
Mandatory Motherhood: Your wife doesn't want kids? Just clone a new wife who will be more compliant! The man responsible received an appropriate comeuppance.
90% of Your Brain : Dodged, sort of — it's the usual "at one time" caveat.
Not Using The Zed Word: Averted in "All the Rage." Applied Phlebotinum gives the staff of Global Dynamics a familiarHate Plague. Carter muses, "it's like a Romero movie out there," and later gets the mob's focus by shouting "Attention...[searches for a word] zombies!"
Not What It Looks Like: Inverted when someone walks in on Carter putting on forties clothes in season four. He's in there with Allison. The woman who walked in asks what they're doing, and he says "inventory" with air quotes. She buys it. "You and half the base. Save it for the dance."
Ontological Inertia: Adam Barlowe, father of Beverly Barlowe, was saved by Allison in the past after his heart stopped by shocking him with jumper cables. Dr. Grant steals the cables so Adam will die in order to prevent a future tragedy, but Allison just finds an alternate means to save him.
Percussive Maintenance: How Professor Thatcher fixes his MAD device after it refuses to shut down.
Also how Stark, at Carter's urging, fixes the tumbler's navigation system. "Smack it!"
Rape Is Love: Or, more precisely, Mind Rape Is Love. SARAH adds an emotional attachment subroutine to Deputy Andy's programming, without permission, so he'll reciprocate her feelings. After a short stint of him trying to woo Jo, SARAH eventually admits to what she's done. Andy thinks it's the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for him, and even asks to keep the program after it's spread to (and been wiped from) every other AI in town.
Which leads to his walk of shame in the morning, complete with a very astonished and disturbed Jo and Carter.
Screwed by the Network: SyFy ordered season six and there were rumors it'd be the last season. Then they said the cancellation rumors were false and they looked forward to more. Then they took back season six and cancelled the show for real. Luckily, they then ordered an extra episode of season five to wrap the series up.
Second Place Is For Winners: Zoe gets a car out of the Science Fair; she'd much rather have it than the first-place prize of a GD internship. Perhaps this was even intended since given her exposure to GD - especially major figures like Henry, Allison, and her dad - there's no real need for her to intern at GD. She likely could get a job outright simply by asking.
Sherlock Scan: Deputy Andy figures out the entire Carter-travelled-to-1947-and-returned-to-an-Alternate-Universe plot after looking at him and fielding a handful of totally innocuous questions.
Simpleminded Wisdom: Sheriff Carter is usually 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.
Not to mention Kim in "Once in a Lifetime" to save the timeline. And Kim again, or at least Kim 2.0, in "Shower the People" to save the residents of Eureka from a bio-computer virus. Both times the resident Woobie Henry couldn't stop it.
Sorry Ociffer: Zane does this in "The Story of O2" after crashing a flying scooter thing. He's not actually drunk — he's accidentally high on oxygen.
Taking the Bullet: Jo does this for Carter in "Reprise". Thanks to Time Stands Still and Brainwashed and Crazy wackiness, she also happens to be the one that shot him in the first place. Thanks to Carter and the bullet being frozen in time, she has ample time to get a vest to block the bullet before taking it.
As in, objects from 1947 are getting randomly zapped into 2010, and if they don't solve the problem, the past and the present will overlap completely, destroying time as the cast knows it.
Time Travelers Are Spies: This assumption makes the cast's life a lot more difficult in "Founder's Day".
The Time Traveller's Dilemma: In season 4 episode 2, the main cast have a talk about what it means for them being in the new timeline and Henry warns them of the dangers if they were to tell everyone about what happened. Alison mentions that, like previous crazy situations, there is actually a protocol for it.
And of course Henry folds like a house of cards the moment any pressure is put on him to divulge the secret.
This doubles as a Writer on Board, considering Henry has been keeping his original shenanigans from "Once in a Lifetime" under wraps for several seasons now.
Plus, he was hooked up to a memory-reading machine at the time...
Title Drop: Taken Up to Eleven by doing a title sequence drop in Episode 14 of Season 4, where the floating buildings part of the title opener, which has been part of the show since episode 2, is copied including the music as a result of an anti-gravity field.
Too Dumb to Live: Really, Fargo? You live and work in the Town Of Mad Science, and your first impulse on finding a strange machine is to turn it on? By inserting and turning two keys simultaneously? Really?
Tranquilizer Dart: Used on Jack in the pilot and, inadvertently, on Vincent, both times fired by Taggart.
The Triple: Dr. Boyle listing his grandmother's missing heirlooms in "Up in the Air":
Boyle: Grandma's gold wedding band... pearls... her antimatter... Carter: Antimatter?
Undead Tax Exemption: Averted. Part of Fargo's efforts to set the time-displaced Trevor Grant up as Eureka historian include tax records... in which he has mistakenly listed 11 dependents to a single man. Needless to say, the IRS starts investigating. This turns out to be a smokescreen, and it's actually Beverly who's been investigating him.
Un Paused: Fargo in the season 1 finale. Beverly snaps him out of hypnosis, and he finishes his sentence about how he couldn't possibly be hypnotized.
Unwanted Rescue: At the end of season two, Carter, Stark, and Taggart work their way through to the morgue to stop a deadly flesh eating bacterium. When they get to the morgue they find a lot of staff members hiding from the plague, which they just unleashed into the morgue! Then it turns out that the morgue is where the plague started, which turns it into Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like. Then it turns out the plague was a hoax. Then they have to escape the building, which is on hardcore defense mode.
The Watson: Carter usually solves the problems, but he's the Watson when it comes to the town's science or history.
Weirdness Censor: Zig-zagged; the whole town is in on their secret so the weird stuff that happens are just industrial accidents to them but there must be dozens of smokescreens in place in order to prevent anyone outside the town from finding out about the bigger stuff that might leak out.
Writers Cannot Do Math: "Founder's Day" somehow has an 11-year solar flare cycle which is at its peak in both 1947 and 2010; "I'll Be Seeing You" implies that it probably also peaked in 1939.
With a peak in 2010 and in 1947 a 10.5 years cycle would be accurate. But when explaning this to someone you'd just round off and say eleven years.
11 years" is common approximation, but the length of cycles is actually variable to a point. However, while there was actually a solar maximum in May 1947, there was not one in 2010 (the maximum of the current cycle is expected in 2013, and so far it looks like a weak cycle overall). And the maximum before 1947 was in 1937, not 1939.
You Are With Me: The third-season episode "I Do Over" does this to great effect.
You Just Told Me: The 4th season episode "A New World" has Deputy Andy using this on Sheriff Carter to get him to admit that he and the others did in fact go back in time and are now living in an alternate (to them) timeline. Andy already had figured it out conclusively, he was just making sure. Carter makes fun of this at the end of the episode.
You Must Be Cold: Parodied when Carter and Allison walk into the freezing cold cafe and he ostentatiously gives her his coat. Well, his vest. His orange traffic vest. Which offers no protection. Allison is not impressed.
He was actually doing it as payback for a joke she made about the vest earlier. This was just an excuse to have her wear it.
Your Mom: Dr. Grant gets a good one on Carter in "Momstrocity" without even skipping a beat.
Carter: Well if you were talking about my mom, I'd run off into the woods too. Grant: I'll be sure not to talk about it then.
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