EUREKA: THE FINAL SERIES

SY-FY

It is curtains for Eureka. The fifth series, currently showing in the UK is the final series.

The series started with a different feel to the others: a little darker. Eureka is very much a show that uses comedy, but the start of season five saw the main characters of Eureka abducted and hooked up to a VR machine, trapped in a world that they thought was real. An evil Senator was behind a plot to reap the benefits of their findings in the make believe world they were trapped in. Meanwhile, the characters left behind thought that the others were on a failed mission to Mars and were missing. Just as I was getting in to this storyline it was suddenly resolved: Sheriff Carter to the rescue as usual (another key plot detail in the show is that despite the town being populated by the brainiest scientists in the country the dumb old sheriff always comes up with the answers) and we are back to the normal format. Well, almost.

After the escape from VR world, Holly, girlfriend of Fargo gets stuck there. So for the next few weeks a sub plot runs in which Holly is about to be erased until a eureka moment is arrived at to save the flame haired damsel. That's as it should be in eureka but that aside the program seems to be turning into a love story, or worse, a rom-com. There has always been the will they/ wont they plot involving sheriff Carter and Allison. This was then added to with an on/off relationship between Jo and Zane and the love interest of Henry and Grace. Now we have Fargo and Holly, an unlikely couple if ever there was one. This one was put together for the nerds in the audience, you know, the type that get turned on by films like weird science, where the nerd gets the babe he never would in reality.

The romance is beginning to get in the way of the storyline. It seems that the director can't go five minutes without slipping in a smoochy moment or one of those "we have to talk" moments. You know the ones: there is something that has to be said but before it is said the phone interrupts. Next attempt will be foiled by someone coming in to the room, and so on until you feel like screaming at the screen " for ***** sake , spit it out!" and pointing out to anyone watching with you that it is just one sentence, they could have said it ten times over by now.

As you can probably tell, this is beginning to get on my nerves. I watch to see crazy capers backed up with great CGI and a laugh or two all wrapped up in just under an hour. I don't know where the program is going with all this kissy kissy stuff. When series five aired I thought as I watched the first few weeks that it would build up in to an exiting climax (It's too much to hope that it will end with a major accident that will blow them to smithereens). Now I am worried that it will end with them all taking a hallucinogenic drug, denouncing warfare and turning the town in to a nude peace haven.

This series has been very disappointing. I don't know how it will end but I know it is likely to be soaked in smooch and sentimentality. A lot of programs get pulled without reaching the end of the run: this should have been one of them.