Recap / Eureka Pilot

Cheer up, you could be in Deliverance.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.

—Albert Einstein (opening quote)

U.S. Marshal Jack Carter finds himself stranded after a car accident while transporting a young fugitive across the American Northwest. Seeking help at a small town nearby, Jack finds himself caught up in a big secret and a lot of strangeness.

Meanwhile, stranger things are afoot than usual in the town of Eureka. With the Sheriff out of commission, Jack's investigative skills are suddenly in demand.

Tropes

• Actor Allusion:
  • Colin Ferguson has played a US Marshall before.
  • Rob LaBelle has played a Genius Ditz Gadgeteer Genius before.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between Jack and Allison.
• Call-Forward: Carter finds Zoe reading a science magazine. She claims it's the only thing available, but she was absorbed enough to not notice who she was talking to, foreshadowing her turning out to have a genius I.Q.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Carter finishes with all that craziness in that weird little town and returns to L.A., only for a pair of D.O.D. agents to appear with a new assignment. In the final scene, he's the new Sheriff of Eureka.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Eureka's sign states that it's in Washington, rather than Oregon as in the rest of the series.
  • It's strongly implied that Carter and Zoe will be executed if they can't find a use for him, which makes you wonder how many people that's happened to. Later, various characters' family members wander in with impunity.
  • Head of GD is Professor Warren King, former mentor of Allison's. He's replaced next episode by Nathan Stark, Nobel prizewinner and Allison's estranged husband.
  • The town layout and the GD building are also different than in later episodes.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Jo's comes when Carter arrives at the Sheriff's office with Zoe. He reaches for his badge to prove he's a Marshall, barely reveals his gun in the process, and before he can blink he's on the floor in a half-nelson as Jo yells "gun!"
  • Carter's comes a little later, when a search party is assembling to find Brian Perkins. Confronted with a very strange crime scene and harried by Allison, who wants him to quit looking at classified stuff, Carter points out that, although the science stuff is beyond him, he has been a Marshall for a while. He then calmly follows the trail of a chocolate handprint and a Hershey's wrapper to where Brian is hiding in the trailer.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: More like Complain, Complain, Oh Crap when Henry is about to do an experiment, with Spencer's "help."
  Spencer: "Answer the phone, Spencer!" "Close the window, Spencer!"
  Henry: Here goes nothing. [Turns on large gadget] Yeah. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes! [The gadget starts to levitate]
  Spencer: "Refill the liquid nitrogen, Spencer..." [Beat] Henry!
  [Kaboom]
• Gun Nut: Jo. Assembling guns against the clock seems to be a hobby of hers. Also, Sheriff Cobb has to remind her not to bring guns to a call.
• Just One Second Out of Sync: Walter's experiment is a tachyon accelerator. When it starts misfiring, it does strange things to time; parts of the RV are removed from time and dumped at a location determined by the turning of the Earth.
• Here We Go Again!: With Carter having just arrived back in Eureka as its new Sheriff, he hears a distant explosion, followed by an enormous crash as a large piece of machinery ploughs through the office's roof.
  Carter: Jo? Call Henry.
• The Hero: U.S. Marshal Jack Carter.
• Humiliation Conga: The pilot establishes Carter's status as the Butt-Monkey as unpleasant things happen to him when he threatens to get close to the town's secrets. Highlights include being shot with a trang dart and transported in a dog cage, punched out by Jo, and locked in a cell with his delinquent teenage daughter.
• Implausible Deniability: When Sheriff Cobb calls to ask about a large explosion that just happened at his garage, a soot-covered Henry's response is to grin like a maniac and say, "Huh, what explosion?"
• I Warned You: Colonel Briggs called a meeting when informed of the wormhole situation.
  Briggs: Wake up the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Gather everybody in the sitroom, tell them the topic of the discussion will be "I Told You So!"
• The Ketchup Test: Carter and Alison find a handprint smeared in some dark substance on a destroyed RV while a young boy is missing. Carter tastes the stuff.
  Allison: What are you doing!?
  Carter: Don't worry, it's not blood.
  Allison: Well then, what is it?
  Carter: [Looking pensive] Chocolate. [Beat] Hershey's Big Block. [Smiles smugly] With almonds.
  Allison: How could you possibly know that?
  Carter: [Picks candy bar wrapper up off the floor]
• Love Interest: Allison is this to Carter.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Sheriff Cobb, Jo and Allison, when they learn a U.S. Marshall is in town and may end up seeing classified things.
  • When Carter is cornered in the Sheriff's office by Jo, Allison and Taggart, whose dog cage he just escaped from, he demands to know what's going on in the town, threatens to call a team of Marshalls if he doesn't get answers and sarcastically asks what they're going to do about it. Allison looks to Jo, who cricks her neck. Carter, who's already had a taste of Jo's combat prowess, suddenly looks scared. He's next seen in the jail cell.
• Running Gag: Carter's habit of getting his car totaled starts early when he crashes his car and needs help from a nearby small town.
• Shout-Out:
  • With The Hero being a U.S. Marshall, naturally there's a reference to The Fugitive.
  • Stuck in a crashed car, Zoe references Alive.
  Zoe: What if you don't make it back? I'll be stuck in here like those guys in the plane who had to eat each other.
  Carter: You're right. [Tosses over some ketchup packets] Here's some ketchup. Start at your feet, work your way up.
  • Henry says at one point, "We're gonna need a bigger battery."
  • Jo refers to Zoe as "Felon Spice."
  • Eureka itself is compared to both The Bridges of Madison County and Deliverance.
• That Came Out Wrong: Invoked by Jo.
  Sheriff Cobb: That was Ned Carver. He claims that aliens have abducted some of his cattle again.
  Jo: Call me when they move onto anal probes. [Beat] Wait, that didn't come out right.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Played With. It's implied for a while that Eureka may be one of these, as unpleasant things keep happening to Carter as he gets close to various secrets. But with Sheriff Cobb disabled by one of the anomalies, Carter is brought in to take his place, and shown the truth; Eureka is a research base full of world-class scientific geniuses, disguised as a small town.
• Troubled Teen: Zoe is a teen delinquent who ran away from home. Has somewhat of a Freudian Excuse with the divorce of her parents.