Recap / Eureka Ex Machina

Reunited.

Holly: Wait, you didn't say anything about me?
Fargo: What was I supposed to say? "Hey, guys, nice memorial and all, but Holly is still kind of alive"?
Holly: You could have at least acted upset.
Fargo: Well, plenty of people did. The planetary sciences team would not stop bawling.
Holly: Cosmo chemists are very sensitive, unlike certain people.

During the installation of a new security system, a number of failures appear.

Tropes

• Arbitrary Skepticism: Jo takes a long time to accept the idea that Holly survived in a computer considering her boyfriend switched bodies with Carter two weeks earlier. She later admits it's about her father's inability to move on after her mother died, and projecting that onto Fargo.
• Artistic License – Military: Major Shaw addresses Jo as "Sergeant." As a West Point graduate, Jo should have been commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.
• Call-Back: Holly's love of music is remarked upon.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Jo and Allison are concerned about Fargo's behaviour during the memorial. He's absent a lot, acting distracted and emotionally unaffected. Not knowing Holly's (sort of) still alive, it sounds very much as if they think he's on drugs.
• Due to the Dead: Carter tells Major Shaw he's not putting the PANOP system in the observatory, where Holly's memorial is about to be held, that day. Shaw takes one look at the memorial paraphernalia and agrees to start elsewhere.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Fargo and Holly are reunited when she's downloaded into SARAH.
• Expospeak Gag: From Vincent, at Holly's memorial:

  Vincent: We have all Holly's favorites: fusili with gruyere, peanut puree and blackberry preserves on brioche.
  Jack: Mac and cheese and PB&J.

• Heroic Sacrifice. Averted. Holly appears to have died after staying too long in the sodium beacon to prevent it blowing up three floors of GD. Turns out she escaped to Henry's memory lattice in time.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Carter and Zane both enjoy their straight-laced girlfriends breaking the law to save Holly.
• Irony: Holly decries the sodium beacon dedicated to her memory as "lame." It saves her as she shelters there from the DOD's purge of the GD system (although it does blow up, due to a technical flaw Holly would have warned Fargo about, if he'd asked her).
  Holly: You named a laser pointer after me?
• Karma Houdini: Courtesy of Zane, who makes it look like the PANOP system caused all the problems, which Jo and Fargo were trying to prevent. The PANOP system is packed up and shipped out.
• Oh, Crap!: Fargo really goes through it trying to save Holly.
  • When Major Shaw tells Fargo and Zane that the matrix computer - containing Holly - is to be locked away somewhere in the DOD vault, never to be seen again.
  • After helping the DOD pack up the computer, Zane reassures Fargo he only did so as a cover for transferring her to safety in the GD computer... and then can't find her, leaving the hard drive he's just packed as the only copy.
  • Just when Fargo says he can accept not seeing Holly again as long as she's safe, he learns that the hard drive will be wiped before shipping.
  • Fargo reaches Holly's hard drive, only to discover it's been wiped already.
• Running Gag: Holly's favourite song, played at her memorial, is apparently "Car Wash."
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Zane and Allison illegally help Fargo access the secure storage area where the hard drive is locked away. Jo disrupts Major Shaw's purge of GD's systems and gets herself arrested to save Holly.
• Shout-Out:
  • Fargo speaks in code while trying to rescue Holly's hard drive.
  Fargo: Frodo has reached Mordor.
  • Fargo's attempted rescue of Holly's drive is a Mission: Impossible homage executed with, well, a Fargo skill level.
• They Would Cut You Up: Fargo is afraid of a cyber version of this trope happening to Holly if the DOD find out she's in the hard drive, hence why they can't just tell the DOD she's in there as Allison suggests.
• Wham Shot: After the sodium beacon goes haywire and carves up the observatory, Henry realises there's something non-random about the damage. He and Carter go to an overlooking balcony, where Jo and Fargo catch up to them. They all look at the damage from above, where the laser burns clearly spell out, "help me".
• White Void Room: How Fargo experiences Holly's hard drive, which tells him it's been wiped.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: Jo and Zane promised each other to be completely honest. Zane has fun with it.
• Window Love: Holly and Fargo, given that she is still essentially a computer program.