Eureka, the scifi show on Syfy about a crazy town full of geniuses, has ended. They gave us 5 great seasons and I am grateful to Syfy for allowing them to produce the “series finale” episode as a send-off to all the characters, something that Stargate: Universe never did get.
The best thing about Eureka wasn’t the science fiction or the high concept. It was teh characters – they had more heart and were more authentic than most scifi shows. Firefly was full of wisecrackin’ badasses, but the only person who really was genuine was Kaylee; Eureka had an entire cast full of Kaylees. Stargate Universe was character driven but was more about the high-concept of true exploration of the Unknown, and it did that brilliantly, but the appeal was different. You can’t compare Eureka to SGU in that way. In fact, if anything, the template for Eureka was The Cosby Show, which served to inform mainstream America that here was an upper-class African American family, with the same dreams and problems as everyone else. Eureka took that template and applied it to Science and scientists, normalizing them the same way. The only way you do that is with a cast of genuinely interesting people, with an authenticity to the chemistry and camraderie that clearly isn’t limited to the screen.
Regardless of why it was great, it’s over, and though of course I have my usual issues about the broken model of television and cable and the perverse incentives that seem to bury the shows I want to watch while rewarding the ones I don’t, I can accept it. Eureka and Farscape and SGU still exist, I did watch them, and I loved them. And I can recommend them to others here on my blog in the hope that others will be enriched by them as I was.