Rann:  And so we finally begin the season three episode four Eureka review. I’m going to try for lots of screenshots and stuff to help validate you guys having to wait for it so long, so expect people making lots of funny faces. ... What? I find the facial expressions on the show funny!

Also, I want to note that this was an absolutely fabulous episode. It was top-notch, possibly one of the best the series has done yet, if not its best episode so far. I do have some legit criticisms of it, and a lot of the usual snark, but I just want it clear that the episode itself was fantastic.

Anyway, we begin the episode with Carter coming into the shower and in that dazed still-mostly-asleep way most of us have (except for that bizarre and annoying variety of subhuman known as the “morning person”) asks for water. We’re only seeing him from the shoulders up why? I mean, I don’t know that you could accurately call this a family show, one season two episode revolved almost entirely around the female population of the town wanting to fuck Carter to death. Sci-Fi seems to understand the power of cheesecake with their female characters, but is seemingly stuck in some backwards male-dominated science fiction genre where women aren’t reading/watching, and if they were, women don’t have those sorts of urges anyway.

So, basically, what I’m saying, Sci-Fi, is that Colin Ferguson is a very attractive man and you could stand to show a little more of him off. I mean, you don’t exactly have to go full NYPD Blue buttshot, here, but something between shoulders and knees would still work.

Okay, so actually the scene’s a little more daring than I remember it, and the camera work’s surprisingly cunning to give you the sense that, yeah, Carter’s naked because he’s in the shower. Good on ya, Sci-Fi, you remembered that there are in fact girls watching! (And, y’know, guys who like looking at Colin Ferguson. ... Rowr.)

There’s no hot water, the shampoo bottle is empty, and it’s already abundantly clear that Carter’s just going to be having one of those days. Sometimes I wonder if poor Carter ever gets to not have one of those days. Well, things turned out pretty decent in the volcano episode, which just goes to show you how much everyone’s life can improve by having Alan Ruck around. Carter heads out of the shower to get ready while Sarah mother hens him, and we get a nice (and wholly unnecessary, therefore clumsy-feeling) close-up shot of his Degree deodorant as he takes it out of the cabinet. HAI GUYZ DID YOU FORGET THIS SHOW’S SPONSORED BY TEH DEGREE FOR MENZ?!?! Yeah, it’s about as annoying as that. Besides, here’s what they oughtta be selling.

Rann:  Am I right? Eh? Eh, ladies? Amirite? I’m right.

(By the way, Colin Ferguson seems to be a fan favored possibility for the role of Captain America in the upcoming movie. I can see it. He’s clearly not Super Soldier buff, but he’s got the frame for it and the costume can take care of the rest. Plus he’s got that great home-grown America feel to him. ... No, I didn’t mean that in the naughty way, get your mind out of the gutter. And your eyes off his chest. Yes, Spivey, I mean you.)

Carter, helping reinforce the kind of day he’s having, cuts himself shaving. Clearly this wouldn’t have happened if this show was instead sponsored by Gillette instead, because I don’t think I’ve ever cut myself with my Gillette Fusion Power brand razor, even when utilizing the special single-blade beard edging razor in the tip!

(See, you marketing fucks? I can do it too. ... Actually, seriously, it’s a pretty good razor, even if I don’t actually use the battery function ever.)

But all of this shitty-dayness becomes clear as Carter mentions that his razor cut will look great at the wedding. Ah, Allison’s wedding day, clearly the perfect day for the universe to make Carter its chewtoy yet again. (And boy, he hasn’t even gotten started yet.) It just keeps getting worse as he heads downstairs for breakfast to find Zoe in a particularly smarmy mood, and then gets ketchup on his last clean uniform shirt (which he has to wear to go fire people). Then his sister, who I’m guessing is actually the long-lost triplet from the Phoebe-Ursula set, shows up at the door. (Seriously, they so just recycled shit from Friends to make Lex, it’s kinda sad.)

Carter quickly escapes the clutches of his insane sister and self-satisfied daughter and heads off to go “redact” some people. Why do they always say “redact” on this show? Is that the new corporate-speak to avoid owning up to tossing someone out on their ass so that the one doing the redacting can have a raise? (Honestly, how much are they paying Thorn to shave a few bucks off the budget, and couldn’t they have just saved a bunch by not hiring her in the first place?)

Carter asks Allison if she shouldn’t be at a beauty parlor getting all made up, and Allison asks if it’s 1960 and no one told her. I guess I missed the part where brides these days just roll out of bed and show up at the wedding after running a brush through their hair. Carter says that a wedding day should be huge and special, specifically “momentous”, and Allison pouts that redaction is momentous too and she owes it to these people to see them through it.

So, okay, has she completely lost all power now? Is there even a point to her showing up to work while Thorn’s there, if Thorn has that much power to yank her around by the short-curlies? Couldn’t Allison say “Okay, I’ve got the list, I’ll do this tomorrow or Monday” and thus leave her wedding day free? If for nothing else than not having to remember firing a bunch of people just before she walked down the aisle? Thorn says “quarterly balance sheets are due Monday”, which I guess somehow makes that all better. They couldn’t deal with just quietly removing these people from the payroll and then informing them when they came in the next day? They have to go through security to get in, the guards could just say “Please report to the director’s office” as soon as they came in.

Turns out Thorn’s not invited to the wedding, so this comes off more as petty vengeance on her part. Yes, we get it, Sci-Fi, she’s a bitch. You hardly need to convince me. Carter has to fire the “excrement guy”, who laments that he’s been in Eureka for eight years, and “it’s kind of hard to go back to the (something completely and utterly unintelligible), y’know?” I honestly cannot understand what in the fuck he said. It sounds like it might have “Petco” in there, but no clue. “Petco in Pecoyma” or something, I guess we’re all expected to be familiar with the town of Pecoyma. Who knows. Carter tries his best to be both comforting and professional… boy, sure glad Allison was there to see these people through their “redactions”, huh?

Stark comes sweeping in, and Carter uses the same beauty parlor line on him, probably for his own amusement. Nathan just brushes right by it, saying that he and Fargo are supervising an important delivery. Carter takes five seconds to ask them where maintenance is, with Nathan acting like he’s an idiot for not knowing the building’s whole layout. Nathan reminds him not to be late, and not to forget the necklace, so hey, grooms can have the wedding day jitters too. They walk off, and Carter can’t believe Allison’s actually marrying Nathan, Nathan can’t believe Allison asked Carter to walk her down the aisle.

Rann:  Carter walks into the basement room of Leo Weinbrenner, who has apparently turned on the black light and is currently getting the Led Zeppelin cued up for his D&D session. The lights suddenly get a whole lot brighter, indicating that either something got turned on or Carter just walked headlong into a little Columbian sauna and it’s made him groovy. Deciding he can come back tomorrow, Carter escapes the mood lighting and heads back out.

At the wedding, Nathan chastises Carter for being late, Carter’s excuse being “I had to redact twelve people… and find a tie.” Soooo Allison actually didn’t do a damn thing, she just showed up, claimed credit for getting her people through it, and then let Carter do all the work. Nice. Carter heads back to Allison’s dressing tent, passing by Jo who… well, the dress isn’t the best, but at least it’s not pastel-colored. Also, niiiice biceps, Ms. Cerra!

Rann:  Anyway, Carter goes on inside and does a fairly standard “wow” over Allison in her wedding dress. The dress is nice, but the hair just isn’t doing anything for me. She’s got a nice face, but the forehead is detracting a bit of attention from it.

Rann:  Hm. Actually, from close up it’s not bad at all. Still, never much cared for the whole “bundled at the back of the head” hairdo.

Rann:  Carter gives Allison a rather gooey little speech about how he’ll always be there for her, no matter what. Then they walk down the aisle, and Carter gives her away in very cute fashion. He and Nathan convey silent man-feelings to one another with head motions, and Carter goes to take his seat. Henry is apparently officiating the wedding, and gets started once Nathan has put the future plot device, er, wedding necklace around Allison’s neck.

Henry gets to the part about if anyone has a reason these two should not be wed, speak now. God apparently has something to say about it, as a big blue explosion-thing goes off in the sky. Carter suddenly finds himself back in his shower and trying not to fall on his ass. Perhaps thinking he drifted off into a long and strangely complex daydream, he demands warm water from Sarah and is told there isn’t any. He goes for his body wash, and-

Rann:  Oh, c’mon. If you’re going to corporate whore a show, why not go whole hog? Degree doesn’t have a parent or sister company that makes body wash? ... Why am I complaining about this? I guess it just seems weird to go so far in whoring out a show to a sponsor, and then just whore it out to ONE sponsor. But Carter picks up his bottle of “Grubby Guy”, then seems to intuit that it’s empty before even opening it. A moment later, the open bottle drops to the floor.

We get a repeat shot of the Degree (“Hey guys, think we can write a whole episode around showing the same shot of the sponsor?”), and Carter again cuts himself because he’s not using the Gillette Fusion Power with flexible comfort guard! (Get yours today!) Carter gets such strong deja vu he asks Sarah to confirm that the wedding is today, remarking that it feels like he was already there.

Titles roll. I know it seems like I wrote a whole helluva lot before the title crawl even went, but the titles start at just over eight minutes and forty seconds into forty-three minutes and ten seconds of episode, so we’ve already covered roughly a quarter of the show.

Rann:  You’ve gotta love that opening credits shot of Carter, though. It’s the penultimate Carter expression of “What fresh Hell will it be today?” This episode also uses probably the most abbreviated version of the OP yet, at almost exactly ten seconds long.

Carter wanders, befuddled, into the kitchen, and this time it’s Zoe who splatters ketchup on its shirt, already having gotten the bottle out. This episode does seem to go with a theory of time that some stuff just generally tries to fit itself into the time continuum, fitting events to match properly, even something as small as a ketchup stain. Carter and Zoe have much the same conversation as last time, just with Carter having this strange “Hunh” demeanor through most of it. He correctly identifies that it’s his sister at the door when the doorbell rings, and uses his previous experience to extricate himself twice as quickly.

Meeting up with Allison, Carter says he has a weird feeling something’s up, and Allison brushes him off. It won’t get into the territory of proving that she’s literally incapable of learning from the experiences of roughly a week ago until next time around when Carter starts accurately predicting the future. Finding Allison being the bizarro universe version of an idiot savant again, Carter goes to talk to… some other people that never wise up and listen to him, Nathan and Fargo.

Rann:  Nathan gives Carter almost the exact same response he did earlier, except this time to an entirely different question. There were times where I thought Carter was actually going to be stuck in a loop of everyone having the exact same reactions independent of what he did, as if he could just step back and watch them converse with an invisible him. The time loop doesn’t wind up THAT stuck, though.

Carter asks if a time loop is possible, and Nathan says no; time flows in one direction and one direction only, and a time loop would cause everyone to be deleted from reality like that porn pic you saved and don’t want the SO to find in your folders. Which is indeed pretty consistent with how the show’s handled time travel before; changes to the time continuum are bad news, physical time travel is a no-no.

Transition to Cafe Diem where Aunt Phoebe is saying that her own SO apparently had visa troubles getting into the country. Zoe refers to unseen SO guy as Aunt Phoebe’s “gorgeous Doctor Who”, instead of, y’know, “gorgeous WHO doctor” which is what she actually means, so that Vince can wind up looking like an idiot for thinking Zoe said what she actually said. Carter comes in and asks Zoe if she noticed anything weird last night, like him sleepwalking. (I’m sure some fanficcers just came up with plot ideas.) Carter’s sister gratuitously abuses a childhood nickname that Carter obviously hates, so remember that when she chastises him later for not relating to her and others on an adult level.

Aunt Phoebe spouts some psychobabble, which basically boils down to her thinking it’s all in Carter’s head, and if he wants his extreme deja vu to stop, he’s going to have to plant one on Allison. And seriously, Aunt Phoebe goes from actually sounding like she might be an intelligent professional who knows what she’s talking about telling Carter to confront an issue that might be bothering him to a teenage girl saying “ZOMG you soooooo gotta kiss her!” This explains how Carter can put up with all the immature scientists in Eureka, he’s used to dealing with it from his own gene pool.

This time Carter arrives early to the wedding, and walks in on Allison in her little shorty dressing robe. Y’know, I understand using those around the house (and I think many of them are dead sexy, myself), but when all that’s separating you from a large number of wedding guests are some tent flaps that don’t even overlap, maybe it’s time to haul out the big robe that covers everything?

Rann:  Carter tries to awkwardly express some of the issues he’s been having, owning up to his… well, being an average guy, basically, and thus not entirely comfortable with opening up and expressing everything in an open and completely honest fashion. (How this somehow became a typical trait only of people with penises is part of one of the best spinjobs in history, in my opinion.) But anyway, Carter smooches her, and she seems to enjoy it just slightly more than a bride on her wedding day getting kissed by someone other than the groom should. It’s actually one of the finest acting performances I’ve seen from Salli Richardson in awhile, in an episode full of outstanding ones, she turns in that perfect mixture of disapproval but very faint longing that is just right for this scene.

Carter and Allison deal with the situation with surprising and admirable maturity, instead of blowing up, yelling, and overreacting. They get it settled and Carter tells her again that he’ll always be there for her, no matter what.

And yet again, the big blue flashy thing in the sky elects to speak now rather than hold its piece. (Is it “forever hold your peace” or “forever hold your piece”? ‘Cause even without using double entendre, either could work. Peace of not speaking, your piece of advice… uh, anyway.) Carter winds up back in the shower, this time seeming to immediately grok what’s going on.

Carter breezes downstairs, fast forwards through his conversation with Zoe, and manages to leave before Aunt Phoebe gets there. He skips right to talking to Nathan and Fargo, who are again supervising the delivery of an atomic clock. Nathan notes it runs on unstable neutrons, Carter asks about the “unstable”, and Nathan starts to explain before wondering aloud why he would tell Carter anything. Gee, I dunno, Starky, maybe because if you explain stuff to him HE MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING!

Attempting to make a deal with the devil, Carter actually gives talking to Thorn a try, since ridiculously enough she has final say about what projects go live. She brushes him off, of course. They meet up with Allison, and Carter begins accurately predicting what people are going to say before they say it, including how many people they’re going to be asked to redact. This of course makes absolutely no dent in anyone’s disbelief, since while genius bends in the wind like the noble reed, stupidity is immovable like the fucking rock.

Allison misinterprets everything Carter says with such aggressive abandon that you’d wonder if she was doing it on purpose, but Carter reminds her that he’ll always be there for her, no matter what.

Carter watches Fargo and Nathan hook up the atomic clock, and eyes his new nemesis balefully. He’s already made it pretty clear what he intends to do, and really, if he was right, he’d be… well, right.

Rann:  A worried Fargo and Carter come into the clock’s room, and Carter issues an ultimatum: if Fargo doesn’t shut it down, he’s going to shoot it. Fargo ultimately elects to break the vacuum seal on the clock rather than have it riddled with bullets. Carter arrives at the wedding in the middle of the vows, hands over the necklace, and then gets exploded back to the shower, though this time the blue flashy stuff is a lot more violent. Carter hits the floor, and finds that his small shaving cut has turned into a jagged wound across his cheek, as things continue to bleed through from earlier loops.

Carter gives one more try at talking to Nathan and Fargo before giving it up as hopeless, realizing they’re never going to believe him. Nathan dismisses it mostly because how could Carter know about something sciencey that he doesn’t? Carter asks if Nathan’s ego even fits in the building, and Nathan glances upwards as if to check whether he’s cracking the ceiling with his self-image.

Rann:  God I love that smarmy son of a bitch.

Carter learns that the Weinbrenner guy he tried to approach before is GD’s “time guy”, and sets off to ask him stuff. Along the way he meets up with Allison, and again shows off his knowledge of the future, to which she remains oblivious. He doesn’t even bother trying to explain it this time, and instead starts to ask her about something else, but is interrupted by Weinbrenner’s arrival. Leo notes that he’s being fired today and thus can’t really help Carter, and Carter seems to decide that Thorn might actually be the one behind everything. Leo says he’ll sign the redaction papers when Carter brings them by and then scoots, and Carter seems to remember that he never told Leo he was fired, prompting a long glance.

Thorn is talking to somebody about getting some stuff together because there’s a time factor involved, and Carter walks up and does some kinda halfassed interrogation, including inviting Thorn to the wedding to watch her turn him down.

Carter heads to Cafe Diem to try and track down Henry, and kind of brushes off Zoe and Aunt Phoebe, making it clear that he’s in the middle of a big problem. Aunt Phoebe snots that Carter doesn’t have time for her, and apparently a little sick of her bullshit, Carter calls her on ditching out on the rest of the family for six years. She says she was working, he says he is working, and then tries to apologize. But Aunt Phoebe didn’t get her sins ignored and now she’s pissed, and storms off. Zoe tells her father what a jerk he is for not having psychic powers and thus instantly knowing that his sister was pregnant and looking to have the family she’s apparently been having dance to her whims her whole life take care of her again. And of course because this is mainstream TV Carter is humbled and ashamed of his lack of baby-sensing powers and frustration with the past behavior of someone with a vagina, and vows to fix it.

Carter comes up to Thorn in a field where she’s got some hologram of the facility from the first Resident Evil movie projected up above everything. He accuses her of being the one that’s fucking with time, and takes a remote control thingy from her, asking which one is the temporal reset button. But the blue blast hits entirely, and Carter throws himself at Thorn, wrapping his arms around her. The first time, I thought he was trying to drag her back with him, on further viewings it looks like he was trying to shield her from the blast. Carter’s way too nice a guy.

This time, Carter winds up in the shower still wearing his uniform, and not only with the cut on his cheek, but apparently beat up all to hell from being knocked around by the blue blast. This time, once he gets on his feet, he goes right to Henry, which is what he should have done in the first place. He tells Henry about Thorn, but turns out the device he snagged and brought back with him has nothing to do with time, but is a geology gadget, one she was using to scan an underground manmade facility. I hope it’s not full of T-virus zombies.

Henry expositions that he used to work with Weinbrenner and that Weinbrenner was working on a method of time travel via bending light. Carter meets Leo comign into GD and Leo fesses up, admitting he slipped up last time around. Leo says he’s been trying to fix the time loop that he accidentally created, that’s why he lied and set Carter on Thorn. He turns on his Super Ultra Mega Blacklight 9000 as he explains about how that’s why he and Carter don’t move along with the loop, and that the loop was created by a particle decelerator causing a single photon of light travel slower, thus causing the chain reaction, and thus the loop.

Leo says that the last element to stopping the time loop he needs is, well, a timer. Unfortunately he doesn’t have time to invent it before the time loop fucks them all over, so he’s going to have to get into the deceleration chamber and do it manually. Of course, if it doesn’t work, he’s going to be dead, and Carter will have to convince Stark, so to this end Leo teaches Carter an advanced mathematical equation he wouldn’t know otherwise. Leo climbs into the chamber, and tells Carter he never meant any harm. Carter tries to encourage him, right before getting blasted back to the shower. He rushes back to GD and confirms that Leo has indeed paid a high price for his leap-before-you-look approach to science.

Rann:  Carter goes to Nathan and Fargo, and to head off being told he’s crazy, starts singing a little song that’s apparently the equation put to a tune. (Perfectly valid way for some people to memorize stuff, but it does come off a little childish, which is, I’m sure, why they picked it.) But between this and the discovery of Leo’s body, Nathan finally gives and believes the story. He moodily muses that none of them are likely to make it through the next time wave, and asks Carter to distract Allison and keep it from ruining her big day.

So Carter meanders over, and they have their beauty parlor conversation. Allison’s just a little too cheerful to be standing in the room where they just removed the twisted, smoking remains of one of her employees. Well, okay, she’s actually ridiculously too cheerful.

Rann:  Geez, woman, pull it back a little, somebody just died horribly. I mean, I know that happens a lot around here, but still.

Carter tells Fargo and Nathan about Weinbrenner’s problem with the timer, and Nathan observes it must not have been accurate enough. That reminds Carter of the atomic clock, which he suggests, prompting Nathan to offer him the backhanded comment that he’s (sometimes) smarter than he looks.

Carter gets a call from Zoe, and he asks her and Lexi (we shall now dispense with nicknames) to head to Cafe Diem so that he can spend some time with them before he’s busy later. So he has a touching moment with them that mostly involves putting up with his sister, and then escapes again, perhaps pondering that at least if the universe ends, he’ll never have to be called “monkey” again.

Back at Late Leo’s lab, the Earth is almost shattered again as Nathan advocates trusting Carter. Of course, Carter wasn’t there for it, as he walks in right after. Fargo says he did what he could to shore up the clock’s vacuum seal, but it’s not meant for what they’re using it for. Unfortunately it proves this as they try to rev it up to initiate the acceleration, and its case shatters.

Without the clock, they’ll have to do the synch manually. Carter volunteers, but Stark says that it’s just not something he can teach him a math ditty for. Fargo, fear in his eyes and voice, says that he could do it and volunteers. Nathan gives him an honest, true smile and says he always knew Fargo was that sort of guy. Fargo says he sure as hell didn’t know it himself.

Rann:  Nathan, however, is determined to take responsibility for the whole space-time continuum on those big broad shoulders, and muscling up under the weight he steps into the chamber. Nathan assures Carter he’ll be fine, and then, voice quieter, asks for Carter’s assurance that Allison will get the necklace, and that she knows he was doing this for her. Realization sweeps over Carter’s face as he figures out that either way, this man who he wouldn’t call friend but still was one is not going to be stepping out of the chamber.

Rann:  Nathan asks the one man he never showed respect for, but is the only one he respects and trusts enough to watch over the woman he loves, to take care of Allison for him.

Rann:  And with a smile at Carter and the words “I’ll seeya around, Jack”, Nathan Stark saves the universe.

Rann:  Carter and Fargo stare into the chamber where Nathan was only moments ago. Carter starts to turn and leave, only to stop and stare for a moment more, as if hoping that if he just looked again, Nathan would be back and standing there, ready to call him an idiot for ever doubting. But no, and Carter casts his eyes down, knowing what he has to do now.

Grim sadness etched on his bruised and battered face, Carter walks across the sunny, green lawn amidst the happy, gathered wedding guests, holding up a steady hand in a “not now” as Zoe calls out to him. He steps by the confused Jo wordlessly, and into Allison’s dressing tent.

Allison turns to him with a smile, giving a nervous laugh in bemusement at his condition and clothes being unchanged from earlier. She spreads her hands over her dress, the sadness glistening in his eyes as he looks at her. And that’s when Carter has to tell her that he’ll always be there for her…

Rann:  … no matter what.