EUREKA: God is in the Details

This was a forgettable and boring episode. Not up to Eureka's standards.

I have to say this was overall the worst episode I've seen. I still sort of enjoyed it, but this show had the opportunity to do something completely unique with religion and science - and it didn't.

True, Carter didn't have to rely on faith to solve the problem. True, the new religious leader didn't turn out to be the bad guy. We avoided those cliched plot points.

We still had "religious faith can co-exist with scientific rationality" and we had the majority of the town of the SMARTEST PEOPLE in the WORLD (arguably - isn't that the show's premise of who lives in Eureka) all quickly turning to church and prayer when things go a little crazy (funny how that didn't happen the last season and a half.)
Believe in a God or not personally, the reality of the world is that MOST scientists are, at best, agnostic. There are exceptions - and having a church and religious believers in Eureka isn't out there (though I had to admit I was disappointed that save the Sheriff, all the main characters of Eureka were church-goers from the get-go with the negligible exception of Stark who is portrayed as arrogant and self-absorbed anyway) but the way so many, after a day or two of weirdness, stopped trying to figure out what was happening and ran to the church is what bugged me.
They are SCIENTISTS, working with theories so advanced they seem like magic - the whole point of science is studying observable reality and trying to figure it out - and yet when something weird happens half the town stops thinking, starts crying "Judgment Day is here" and begins praying.

Whatever.

D-

On the face of it, this episode of Eureka sounds almost like a reasonable idea for a story. When physicists talk about our reality being an illusion, just a small slice of a larger unseen universe, it does seem like there should be a connection to religion. That is until you remember that science is the mortal enemy of religion. They burned people alive for saying the Earth went around the Sun in the 17th century. Today they say evolution and global warming is a lie. The great thing about science is it is not political. It’s all about reason and evidence. Religion is all politics and the idea there is some common ground with science flies in the face of all of history.

Having said that, I think this episode did a reasonable job of walking a very shaky tightrope between having a credible story line and invoking the wrath of of the faithful. In the end, it is up to the viewer to draw the moral implications of the story and that’s as it should be.

Let me add that I disliked that Zoe was suddenly cured when Carter and Henry turned to space warp generating machine (or whatever it was) off. If Zoe and her friends were affected because a stray ray from the machine came into Carter's house and hit them, why wasn't Zoe cured when she was taken to Global Dynamics and was no longer in the place where the ray was beaming? Or, if it was something that had to wear off, why did her speachlessness go away suddenly when the machine was turned off?

And if the machine's beams were random why did they have effects that could be interpreted religiously so easily?

I think that contrasting science and religion at all in a TV show is a dangerous thing to do because if you show faith and religion in a bad light SOMEBODY is going to be mortally offended. And if you "prove" faith then somebody is going to be disgusted. It's a fine line to walk and this ep did it about as well as it could be done I suppose.

I think Carter suspects Henry knows something about Kim's death and he is biding his time. He knows Kim's death is a raw wound and doesn't want to press Henry too hard. He'll get to it.

I agree with karas1 about Carter and Henry He doesn't know yet if his memory is a real memory or some kind of dream and he knows Henry is hiding something about Kim's death.

But he also likely figures that confrontinhg him directly will only get denials and get him to more actively hide what he knows. If he the argument did happen, then Henry may have reason to keep things from him.

So Carter's appealing to their friendship to gain or regain Henry's trust, rather than take a blunt and couterproductive path. He may not be a scientist does have good instincts about dealing with people.