Recap / Eureka Dr Nobel

... Yeah, that's probably not good.

Dr. Thatcher: If you want sex, reverse the hex.
Stark: Sheriff, did you, at any point when you picked him up, the car ride, the long walk down here, happen to notice this guy's not all there?
Carter: Yeah, there may have been signs.

Who gave Fargo an office? Eureka's resident button-pusher causes havoc when he finds an abandoned doomsday weapon, leading to a missile situation on Main Street.

The only hope is Dr. Thatcher, the elderly scientist who headed up the original program. The problem? He's got dementia. With the clock to oblivion ticking, Carter must put his own sanity on the line to find a solution.

Tropes

• Butt-Monkey: Fargo. He turns on a doomsday device.
• Catastrophic Countdown: With a giant missile due to go off, this was inevitable.
  Carter: How much time do we have?
  Computer: Weapons will deploy in twenty-three hours.
  Carter: Finally, a straight answer.
• 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.
• False Reassurance: While being hooked up to the mind-reading machine, Carter asks about a photo of a chimp on the wall, captioned "In memory of Skippy," who Allison refers to as "everyone's favourite test chimp." Carter asks if Skippy died in the machine he's about to use. Allison says no, the autopsy was inconclusive.
• Good News, Bad News: Invoked by Allison.
  Allison: Bad news, good news. We didn't get anything from Thatcher, but Carter wasn't hurt in the process.
  Stark: Any good news?
• Mind Rape: Subverted Trope as he does it voluntarily, but what Carter goes through in the mind-meld machine is very unpleasant. He screams, a lot, and at one point it's not clear if he's laughing hysterically or sobbing. For the rest of the episode he seems confused at times whether he's himself or Dr Thatcher.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Zoe knows things are bad when Carter apologises for calling her a delinquent earlier.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Zoe is freaked out when Carter, still a bit loopy from the mind-meld machine, plants a Big Damn Kiss on Eugenia.
  Zoe: DAD! What are you doing!?!?
  Eugenia: Mind your own business, dear.
• Running Gag: Carter's Jeep begins its Butt-Monkey career by being crashed into the particle beam weapon.
• Shout-Out:
  • Dr Thatcher's room number is 101.
  • Eugenia's room number is 221.
  • Trying to get the shutoff code from the mentally-damaged Dr Thatcher, Allison has a solution: for Carter to read his mind using an experimental machine. Carter calls it a "Vulcan Mind-Meld machine."
• Single-Issue Psychology: Dr. Thatcher is returned to sanity when Carter, based on what he saw in the mind-meld, persuades everyone to recreate the 1962 Nobel Prize ceremony, with Dr. Thatcher winning it this time.
• Stealth Pun: Dr Thatcher's area of research is Mutually Assured Destruction, a.k.a. MAD. He's a literal Mad Scientist!
• Technobabble: From pretty much every scientist, as usual. Lampshaded by Carter.
  Carter: This ion beam thingy is what exactly?
  Henry: Irradiated uranium isotopes.
  Fargo: Oh God!
  Carter: Death ray. Why don't you just say death ray?
• Too Dumb to Live: Fargo lives in a town of Mad Science and his first impulse on finding a strange machine is to turn it on... by inserting and turning two keys simultaneously.