What goes around, comes around.
Kim: Henry, what did he take from you? Why can't we remember if we ever even kissed? Remember our biggest fight? Remember when you told Jason it was okay to ask me out? Do you?
The citizens of Eureka experience bouts of absent-mindedness as an old friend of Henry's visits. But is his reputation as a scientific superstar well-founded, or stolen? Carter must uncover a daring case of fraud while not letting Zoe down as she prepares for the school play.
Tropes
- Bittersweet Ending: Jason is exposed, his career obviously ruined and presumably all the scientists whose work he stole from will get the proper credit. But Kim has to deal with her husband having been wiping her mind for years, she and Henry realizing they had lost their love, and Kim needing to leave town to handle her fractured feelings.Henry: Kim's the real genius. He's been stealing her work for decades.
Carter: What about all the other research projects he's helped on?
Henry: Wait for the team to make the breakthrough and then wipe them out. Cover your tracks and then ride in and save the day. - Domestic Abuse: Jason Anderson has wiped his wife's mind for years. He not only stole her scientific work, but, as it is implied, erased her memory of her relationship with Henry, and made her forget about wanting to leave him.Kim: I don't know anything anymore. Maybe I cheated on him. How many times did I catch Jason cheating on me and he made it all better? Maybe I left him. How many times did I tell Jason I'm leaving, and I walk out that door and boom, none of it happened? [...] Twenty minutes at a time. How many times do you think? Add it up, Henry. He took a lot more than 20 minutes of my memory. He took my life.
- Engineered Public Confession: As Jason is showing off the experiment, Carter races in to tell him how Kim figured out what he did and it'd be easy for her to sabotage it. He dryly says that should be no problem if Jason had any part in the creation. As the device powers up in energy, Jason breaks and begs Kim to tell him how to fix it. At which point it powers down as the energy buildup was meant to happen. Stark realizes Anderson has no idea how "his" device works and coldly informs him his contract is terminated with hints of criminal charges to come.
- Evil Is Petty: Jason uses his memory eraser on Carter to get out of a speeding ticket. Leads to Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, as this leaves Carter with a clue - the Writing Indentation Clue in his ticket book - that leads to Jason's exposure.
- Hidden Depths: With Zoe getting into the school play, Jo reveals she used to have theatrical dreams.Jo: My mom used to make my costumes.
Carter: You used to do theater?
Jo: Believe it or not, Carter, I didn't have childhood dreams of becoming a commando.
Carter: So you went from being told to break a leg, to actually breaking them? - Laser-Guided Amnesia: Invoked by Jason Anderson. He uses a memory device in order to steal other people's scientific work.
- Shout-Out:
- The diva director at the school may be named for British producer David Puttnam.
Putnam: Space is time, time is relative, and all of it's money.- Jason Anderson's license plate is NID-563, a possible reference to the NID in Stargate SG-1.
- Spy Cam: Carter and Jo use one in order to catch Anderson in the act.
