One of the most fun things about spending time at a place like Comic-Con is the opportunity to watch new episodes of shows in giant rooms full of major fans. We were able to have that experience with Eureka, which was made even better with an episode that featured nerd-god Wil Wheaton and a special guest appearance by, you guessed it, Mr. Wheaton himself. Eureka was the first show I ever wrote about for the blog, and for me it will always represent summer television at its best, so it was really, really fun to watch with a lot of cheering people.

The episode that aired last week was a funny, well-made zombie episode, featuring the poor guinea pig employees of Global Dynamics as a horde of irrationally angry zombies bent on…well, it was never really made clear, but one assumes it was BRAINS. It was a classic Eureka form, introducing the zombie transformation as a Monster of the Week and once again trapping our heroes into a tiny room while they desperately try to find a cure before the zombies break in. Wheaton did a nice job as zombie patient zero, and there was a side plot line with Henry that seemed to be going nowhere but had a nice payoff at the end. Funny, Comic-Con appropriate, and a good time for all.

Zombies!!

But the big story about Eureka this season is the new organizing gimmick, which was introduced in the season premiere and which has yet to be resolved. Rather than let its main characters continue to trundle along their merry destructive ways, Eureka reset the clock for this season by sending several of its main characters into the past – back to the 1940s for the founding of Eureka, to be precise – and then let them return to the present only to discover that everything has shifted slightly. Carter is sheriff, Jo is head of Global Dynamics security, Henry is married, and in the ultimate twist of unexpected strangeness, the accident-prone lab monkey Fargo is now head of GD. It’s a familiar plot device, probably best established by Back to the Future, and it’s a fun way to play with Eureka’s penchant for turning things on their heads.

Still, it would be well within Eureka’s typical format to resolve the Bizarro-Eureka plot line in relatively short order – one episode, or maybe two episodes would be the standard length of time that something this disruptive would be allowed to continue. And yet here we are, four episodes into the season, with still no resolution on how Carter, Allison, Henry, Jo and Fargo will return to their own timeline or whether time traveling 1940s noir scientist Dr. Grant will be sent back to his own decade.

It’s nice to see the show try something different with its long-arc plot line, particularly when this one demonstrates a willingness to fiddle with even the most well-received pieces of the show – Jo was about to get engaged to her boyfriend when she was sent back in time, and returns to discover that they barely even like each other in the new timeline. Allison’s son Kevin, whose autism combined with flashes of inexplicable genius have made him a long-term source of mystery on the show, has been transformed into a regular, Xbox playing, mildly obnoxious teenager. Of course, the alternate timeline problem also helps Eureka delay its own inevitable will-they-or-won’t-they scenario, as Carter and Allison finally kiss back in the 40s, but Carter returns to Eureka to find that he’s still together with his ex-girlfriend Tess.

I think the long-term alternate timeline is a strong device to keep Eureka on its toes, and am pleased that the show has chosen to use the conflict it creates rather than immediately dial everything back to the norm. My only concern is that I can’t find a way to finally resolve this whole mess without a very clichéd “they can go home now, but do they want to?” situation. Still, that’s a long way off, and for now I’m happy to watch everyone flounder around in bizarro world.

Slate.com published an article yesterday reviewing two books about the changing landscape of television advertising, describing the splintering television audience and the problem it poses for advertising and television production. With the classically alarmist Slate title “Is Television Over?,” the author Seth Stevenson points out that without the revenue from advertisements, studios cannot afford to produce high quality shows with large talented casts, good production values, and a decent script. The splintering cable networks mean a smaller concentration of eyeballs on any one show, which means less ad revenue, which means less incoming money, which means more shows like Dating in the Dark and fewer shows like Kings.

What Stevenson’s article doesn’t mention is the new frontier of television advertising, in-program product placement. By any number of accounts, the relationship between NBC’s Chuck and the in-show advertising from Subway helped save Chuck from cancellation this spring. 30 Rock endlessly mocks the need to creatively incorporate sponsorship, but of course the mockery is always also just a funny way to creatively incorporate sponsorship. (Just how many McFlurries did Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek have to eat last season?)

Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek enjoying delicious McFlurries on 30 Rock

I’ve written about this before in relation to Eureka and Degree for Men Deodorant, and this newer system of advertising is so pervasive that it’s hard to think about monetizing television without considering the ubiquity of product placement. In Eureka‘s most recent episode, Deputy Lupo shows off her new car to Sheriff Carter, and Fargo’s car drives up to congratulate her:

Deputy Lupo with her new car; Fargo's car Tabitha, who has a little Knight Rider thing going on

Deputy Lupo: 265 horsepower, track-tuned suspension and all-wheel drive. Totally high performance but completely under my control.

Fargo: Hot wheels, Jo.

Deputy Lupo: Thanks, 6 weeks on the wait list!

Fargo: Small price to pay for awesomeness!

Fargo’s car: Congratulations on your new vehicle, Deputy Lupo. The Subaru Impresa WRX is an excellent choice.

Of course that kind of absurd product placement causes eye rolling, and it does create a distinction between the kind of show that can easily point to a Subway sandwich (like Chuck) and a show that could never plausibly incorporate a Subaru (like Deadwood). I love Deadwood, and hope there are always people trying to make shows of that calibre, but for shows that aren’t on premium subscription networks like HBO, there are ways to think outside the 30 second ad format. It’s not a solution for everything. But am I resigned to roll my eyes as Big Mike takes a bite out of Chicken Teriyaki sub if it means I get another season of Chuck? Sure. Is television over? No, it’s just occasionally more stupid.

Something shifts during Eureka‘s third season. Although the show is recognizably the same, with the same quirks and plot structure and premise, something about the show’s perspective clearly changes, and I’d argue that it happens because of Degree for Men Absolute Protection Anti-Perspirant.

In its third season, Eureka is sponsored by Degree for Men, and rather than just use the typical “sponsored by” teasers and place anti-perspirant prominently around the set, sponsorship trickles down into the show’s design. Degree for Men’s appearance in the show happily coincides with the entrance of a new character, Eva Thorne, introduced as “The Fixer.” Her role is to make Global Dynamics more commercially productive, both by cutting departments that don’t make money and by increasing consumer-focused research. Ms. Thorne walks through Global Dynamics and introduces the new Consumer Research Products Lab, and as she explains that the lab is funded through “corporate synergy,” she clicks a button and immediately a Degree for Men logo appears on the back of everyone’s lab coats. Behind her, a man with the logo emblazoned on his chest waves his arm, seemingly impervious to the flames burning on his hand. (Like users of Degree for Men, he remains cool under fire.) In another episode, Sheriff Carter gets caught in a Groundhog Day experience and re-lives one day over and over again. His day begins in the shower, which he turns off and then immediately reaches for his Degree for Men – first at the start of the episode, and then again after time repeats itself.

Episode seven, “Here Come the Suns,” is certainly the most egregious example of this all-pervasive sponsorship. When a school science project goes awry and creates a second sun directly over the town, Sheriff Carter evacuates the town and then covers himself with a substance that protects against heat, allowing him to return to Eureka and destroy the extra sun. To prepare the viewer for the plotline’s relationship with its corporate sponsorship, the episode begins with another scene in Ms. Thorne’s Consumer Research Lab, where a man douses a dummy with flames as Eva explains: “It’s the latest next-gen technology Zane’s been developing for our sponsor. Over-engineered to keep you cool in the hottest situations.” Crates with Degree for Men labels litter the floor around the dummy.

Blatant, shameless, and silly as this episode-length commercial may be, I don’t believe it’s an entirely negative development for Eureka. Yes, it forces the show to produce episodes like “Here Come the Suns,” where the realization that a “heat protection formula” saves Carter from a star going supernova elicits a classic hand-to-forehead viewer response. Nevertheless, that same winking self-awareness also leads to one of my favorite episodes of the series, “What About Bob?”

The second episode of season three, “What About Bob?” seems like it should be the moment when the show goes irrevocably over the sponsorship cliff, never to return to artistic integrity. This is the episode that first introduces Degree for Men, when Eva Thorne walks into the new lab and clicks the button that turns on everyone’s evil overlord logo. And yet, to fully incorporate this new, self-referential tone, Eureka takes the idea of self-awareness and runs with it, building an entire subplot around the question of what happens when a television show watches itself. In the episode’s main plot, Sheriff Carter and Allison enter a sealed lab made to look like a primordial jungle where several researchers have lived in isolation for years. As Carter and Allison investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of the scientists, Carter’s daughter Zoë and several minor townspeople characters gather to watch events inside Lab 27 from a hijacked security feed.

The security feed from Lab 27 works like a reality show within Eureka, complete with rabid fan base, viewing parties, and excessive viewer commentary. Zoë watches because she’s worried about her dad, but everyone else watches for the drama. “You’ve gotta admit, the injection of new talent has really made this show fresh again,” Fargo says. Vince wonders “which one of the scientists is the red herring?” and Lucas suggests that “the arrival of Sheriff Carter has made it more procedural.” Comments like this, particularly Lucas’ suggestion that Carter makes what was a science-based show more like a cop show, broaden the self-referential eye forced on Eureka by Degree for Men to include the entire project of the show. What could have been a completely bizarre standalone moment of commercial self-awareness becomes a well integrated part of the episode.

And even when Degree for Men doesn’t kick off a metatextual lovefest, Eva Thorne makes arguments for what’s happening to Global Dynamics that are clearly meant to justify the changes in Eureka as well. “We’ve gotta start saving somewhere,” she says, and Zane makes the point even more plainly. “If we come up with a hot product in here, maybe Ms. Thorne won’t have to make so many cutbacks.” In other words, we’ve gotta sell advertising on this show somehow, viewer, and if this Degree for Men thing works, maybe we can afford to make a full season’s worth of episodes rather than stopping at just nine.

It’s hard to vilify shows that rely on sponsors to stay on the air, especially excellent and nearly-extinct shows like Chuck. (Thank you Subway and Alan Sepinwall). Do I wish it weren’t necessary to sell out in such a spectacularly thorough way? Certainly. But for the most part, Eureka manages the shift with characteristic charm and good humor, and the ability to laugh at itself smoothes over the many of the painfully obvious deodorant moments. I don’t know what will happen when season three comes back next week, but I assume from the continuing existence of pages like this one that the sponsorship will continue.

I’ve been watching a lot of Eureka lately. It’s coming back to the new SyFy¹ next week, which I’m excited about, but it really came to my attention as a show to think about when it became a topic of conversation among some sciencey people as a show they really like. I was a little surprised at its popularity, because it always seemed to me like one of those shows where the fiction overtakes the bounds of scientific plausibility (something that doesn’t really bother me, but is roundly disdained by others in my household). The more I watch, though, the more it seems like an important example of the possibility of a non-mediocre middle ground.

Eureka’s premise is that a charming, common sense, everyman, All-American guy named Jack Carter gets assigned to be the sheriff of Eureka, a top secret town full of geniuses. Most of the town is employed by Global Dynamics, a hidden facility sanctioned by the government and designed to create world changing scientific advances. Sheriff Carter’s job is to wade through the daily catastrophes associated with the creation of artificially intelligent military drones, satellites that beam aggression from space, devices that erase memory, etc. etc., while also administering common sense justice against those who use their geniusy powers for selfish purposes. He may not be able to spell corporeal, but he sure can sniff out a bad guy.

Mishap at the Eureka Dog Show

This premise allows Eureka to have its science fiction both ways – it reveres its genius townspeople, it delights in its super geeky setting, but the viewer’s experience of the scifi wackiness is always mediated by Sheriff Carter’s everyman perspective. The space that gets carved out between Carter and everyone else defines the show’s scifi-meets-real-life appeal: Carter lives in an omniscient smart house named Sarah who can anticipate his every need, but who nevertheless gets pissed off when he’s late for dinner. The town hot spot, Café Diem, lets you order anything you can possibly think of and prepares it out of its fission-run, warehouse-sized freezer, but Carter really just wants a burger. Science fair day at the Tesla School for Advanced Learning includes one entry that promises to be the next major development in medical digital imaging, but the school is still ruled by a coterie of gorgeous evil genius girls who mercilessly mock Carter’s daughter Zoë. Eureka lets the viewer imagine awesome scientific advances in the context of recognizable real life, while refusing to condescend either to its slightly stupid main character or its non-genius audience.

The middle ground here comes primarily out of the show’s combination of Carter’s police procedural street smarts and the scifi genre invisible man explodiness, but the impressive resistance to mediocrity comes largely out of its sheer quirkiness. The tone is set by the show’s opening credits, a ridiculously catchy cheerful whistling melody punctuated by odd minor intervals and a piano/washboard backup. That homespun whistle calls back to the Andy Griffith Show backbone that is built into Eureka, but those unexpected intervals cannily inform you that Carter’s Main St. is a different kind of place than Andy’s. Outside of the really masterful main credits, Eureka indulges in a familiar, comforting silliness – lots of covered-in-goo gags, geeky call outs to Doctor Who and Star Wars, Carter’s house is actually a woman jokes, and the unending, ever satisfying encounters between Carter and the scientists he tries to police.² The silliness, though, rarely falls from pleasurable familiarity into boring predictability. New monsters of the week, inventive solutions to mundane problems (your clothes keep cleaning themselves after you take them to the dry cleaners!), and the occasional ring of emotional sincerity prevent the premise from exhausting itself.

Eureka Main Street

Eureka’s writing, while fun, never really elevates it beyond its genre fiction format, and it certainly does not challenge the audience to examine their own lives or confront the existential futility of modern institutions or require them to follow seventeen interwoven plotlines. Still, its pleasant veneer of glossy entertainment acts less as a shell that disguises an empty core and more like a stylistic safety bubble. Inside the bubble, you can forget the implausibility of shared dreaming and instead snicker when the whole town experiences Sheriff Carter’s classic forgot-to-wear-clothes-to-work nightmare. Buried safely within the slick layer of quirk, you’re encouraged to set aside your fake science alert radar and resign yourself to comfortable, imaginative fictional pleasure. Eureka doesn’t take itself too seriously, but its premise and tone do offer some deeper insights. It is an amiable, friendly show, ultimately optimistic about science, the future, and human nature, and full of enough style and imagination to guard against blandness. It lauds common sense without dissing nerdiness, it values loving human relationships without devolving into sappiness (okay, it’s a little sappy), and even as it laughs at itself, it does so without undermining its own project.

All of which is not to say that Eureka is perfect – it certainly isn’t. Some monsters of the week fail to create an appropriate amount of panic, and the origin of any given problem is pretty repetitive (“You say there’s a problem with the flow of time? Who at Global Dynamics is working on a project about time? Lots of space debris headed our way? Say, isn’t someone at Global Dynamics working on a space debris thingy?”). And then there’s the issue of Degree for Men Absolute Protection, which… is a topic for another day. Still, at its best moments, Eureka allows the audience to imagine a future of scientific advances like clean water and air, vaccines for all diseases, and the end of drought and hunger, but it’s difficult to appreciate them from a large-scale perspective. Instead, we experience this edenic future within a familiar, American small town, full of self-cleaning clothes, cars that drive themselves, and houses that have dinner ready when you come home.

¹Yeah, that stupid rebranding is a whole different blog post.

²Carter, to evil scientist: “I’m on to you. I know you have a device that can create a worm hole, or uh, bend time, or make you invisible – a wormholing, timebending, invisibling device that…shields you from the mind.”

Pause.

Other scientist: “Yes. He said invisibling.”