Last night's Eureka wasn't a show to watch if you were worried about retaining water... or making sure that a living computer made from the cloned DNA of your dead girlfriend didn't die was one of your top priorities.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of real-world science, never mind fictional super-science, is beyond me, but can someone explain exactly how last night's last-minute save of Tess actually worked? I get that it worked on the same theory that melted Kim2 into readable data (Although that, too, was pretty much a "I'm really not sure how it works, but I'll just go with it" thing), but exactly what was the difference between the solution (breaking down the compression molecules so that the water was released from Tess' body safely) and the danger of the solution (breaking down the compression molecules so that the water was released from Tess' body "too quickly," therefore drowning her), other than in the writers' heads?
That climactic bump aside - and it's one that I'm willing to forgive, because (a) I'm sure I misunderstood it when watching, and (b) it was really a McGuffin to move the Carter/Tess relationship along, and I'm all in favor of that - I really enjoyed "Shower The People"; it managed to mix the character beats and science problems together more cleanly than usual, it pushed a couple of characters outside of their comfort zone (Fargo's initial attempts at autopsy also providing comedy that wasn't entirely filler), and it featured journeyman actor Bill Campbell (The 4400, The Rocketeer, guest spots in hundreds of other things you've seen) as an apparently hard-nosed but really just misunderstood scientist (Eureka's favorite kind).
It was also, unusually for the show, a mystery that offered up chances for the viewer to guess the who - or what - dunnit without making the answer too obvious: Why were people turning up drowned and surrounded by water when they shouldn't be, and was it connected to what was going on with Carter, who happened to attend Allison's baby shower with the victims? Even with the magic-science resolution to both those questions, it was a nice, if unexpected, touch, and something I'd like to see them take further: Let's have a locked room murder mystery that plays fair sometime soon. I'd even happily volunteer Zane as the victim.
As part of the ongoing soap opera, Kim2's "death" seemed somewhat out of the blue and arbitrary, as if the writers had suddenly realized that they'd left her alive last episode by mistake; unless it's part of some greater story arc about Henry - and I almost hope it's not, considering his last real story-arc was also about Kim's death - it feels rushed and makes the entire "Signal/Kim2" plot that's run since the show's return feel meaningless, unless there's going to be some bigger reveal about the nature of the data Kim2's death released further down the line. Nonetheless, I wish it was something they'd pushed out for at least an episode - I found it hard to really care about her going, considering she's only just arrived. While I like shows that don't drag storylines out for years (*koffX-Fileskoff*), this was kind of the opposite: I was left wondering what the point was.
Next week: Everyone in town forgets themselves, which means we might be headed down that old "Let's see how everyone really feels" stock plot route. Here's hoping that there's a surprise or two on the way, at least.