The rest of the episode uses an interview frame to jump back in time to the mission candidate’s childhoods, but doesn’t suffer unevenness because of it. Eureka works because it embraces its quirks, uses them and moves the heck on.

Highlights include grammar-school Zane hacking the NASA computer to invent a father that never was. Battlestar Galactica alum Aaron Douglas (Chief Galen), shows up as a counselor at the Galaxy Camp where proto-geek Fargo tries and fails to beat his mini-nemisis, who grows up to be Wil Wheaton’s Dr. Parrish.

Wallace Shawn continued his hilarious stint as the HR executive in charge of workplace relationships, but all in all, Eureka wins the gold for the night not because of the geometrically expanding stunt-cast, but because the story and the patter fit together like a proton and an electron.

*

Warehouse 13 took a side-step from their pseudo-procedural to dive fully into a long-running storyline. Warehouse is often my favorite SyFy show no matter what block they are running it with, precisely because they usually don’t worry about the consequences of their main idea and just run and tesla-gun with the fun.

The show premise doesn’t hold high-stakes drama very well, because its basically silly – there’s no way any conspiracy could keep the lid on the existence of such powers in the world, given the fact that any historical footnote kicks one loose - every world leader and historic personage would have come across several, and flea markets and garage sales all over the world would explode with weirdness every other day.

Which is why its more fun just to let the premise wind the cast up and let them go after the twisted history of the week. Eddie McClintock really is top-notch as hapless heroes go, and the alternate goofy history of Warehouse 13, rivaled only by fellow SyFy show Sanctuary in their shamelessness – is always clever.

*

I gave the debut of Alphas an F, but the show has grown into itself since. Recent episodes have balanced the case and the characters much better, but this Monday’s was worrisome – a backslide into the kind of sloppy goop the pilot was mired in. Can this particular experiment in gene-splicing super-powers survive? Despite my criticism – I think I’d like it to.

The cold-open was as dark as it was unnecessarily short – a tidbit of backstory that didn’t get from the back to the story. After the title card, we jumped straight into the same kind of frantically laconic, scatter-shot character development that smeared the series premiere into static.

What the episode does do well is present a believable biological enhancement for the villain that really gels with Alphas power premise. What it doesn’t do is make good TV. The dialogue between Dr. Rosen and the antagonist is stilted nonsense, often making the mistake of stumbling around where the story should already be – because the episode needs to save itself for its own plot outline. 

Although Alphas is doing a better job with the cast, like keeping autistic-lite Gary from getting too grating, supposed team-leader Rosen has fallen from the eccentric, interesting Doctor the pilot made him out to be, to a kind of doddering, professor-knows-best, whose psychology feels empty and whose leadership has become unbelievable.

I’ll still watch Alphas, because some episodes work better than others, but the writers haven’t found a groove yet. Eureka and Warehouse 13 aren’t great partners for it – Haven is closer in tone, while Alphas would have done better with some of the fare SyFy has nixed, like SGU and Caprica. There’s a grit to Alphas, and that’s worth keeping to the grindstone to make work.

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Bruce Farquharson Music said:

	Composer available Greetings. I am a composer who is interested in scoring projects. Please stop by my website for samples of my work as a composer: http://www.brucefarquharsonmusic.com Thanks.
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December 01, 2011
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