One of the Best Series Finales in TV History

Life got a bit crazy for me lately, so I queued up a marathon binge watch of Eureka to provide a bit of sanity and escape. I just finished watching the finale "Just Another Day". It reminds just how beautiful this "love letter" to fans this series wrap-up was.

The show was quirky and fun in Season 1. It ended with that fast forward timeline with Jack & Allison happily married and expecting their first child together.

Then the show seemed to go off the rails a bit with the averted timeline. Henry was at odds with everyone over his lost love Kim. Nathan got to be a bit too big of a character. His snarky byplay with Carter was fun, but I just never liked him as a romantic lead for Allison. It made her character turn elitist and jerky. Series 2 was a frustrating disaster for me with the Artefact and Kevin storyline.

Season three got a bit better, especially once they concluded the Allison/Nathan relationship. I guess I'm one of the few who enjoyed Lexi's hippy character. She brought a bit of mirth and fun back into Carter's life and allowed Zoe's character to transition from troublemaker to promising intellectual.

The storyline with Eva Thorne was good but I never did take to Tess. I always found Tess to be annoying and a bit snotty. She seemed more like a brilliant outsider who presumptuously took over the lead without having earned her place. And then having the season end with Zoe miraculously getting early admission to Harvard and I suppose a full ride scholarship was a clumsy way to write her out of the show.

But the timeline reset in Season 4 was brilliant. I count this as three seasons of Eureka. Season 4 (the timeline reset with Charles Grant), Season 4.5 (the spacecamp/Astraeus mission) and Season 5 (the wrap-up year).Eureka got some of its highest ratings those three seasons. They finally found their groove and created stories and characters that were an absolute joy to escape into.

"Just Another Day" serves as the perfect series ender for all 5.5 seasons of Eureka. Henry becomes the head of Global Dynamics with a happy home life and brilliant wife on the side. Zane has evolved from ne'er-do-well hacker to a seasoned head of infamous Section 5. Jo has a leadership job in security like she always wanted. Both are finally past all the dating games and ready to get serious about commitment. Fargo transitioned from comic relief sidekick in Season 1 to the head of GD and now is off to chase another super secret project with his professional and romantic match Holly. (One wonders if her status as a computer-housed consciousness inside a bioprinted body remains a Eureka secret or iis public knowledge to her new DARPA employers.) Zoe is graduating with honors again, but this time from college and on her way to a medical career. And finally, Jack and Allison are back to exactly where the show predicted they'd be way back in Season 1. That is happily married and expecting their first child together.

It's as if those 4 intervening seasons were just a long twisty road to get Jack exactly where he began years before. He was a workaholic career man who found a home and family he was willing to risk everything to protect and save.

I hate SyFy for canceling this show when it was doing so well and had finally found its groove. But that is the way executives think at that network. They give every show a 5 year run as long as the majority of its production costs are paid by someone else. As soon as SyFy has to start paying the bills (happens from Season 6 on) they cheap out and pull the plug.

The words writers were able to put in Fargo's mouth in that finale were directed straight at the SyFy suits. All the bit about them (GD or really Eureka writers) making mistakes along the way but doing better than they'd every had and finally found their groove... that was all brilliant. The phone call he makes to Grant making his "Hail Mary pass" to appeal to the person who the town inspired and made was pure genius. And even though I too thought Grant a bit too cheeky to be likeable, having him buy the town and turn it into a privately-funded Google-ish entity was a great solution.

Even the song they wrote just for the finale "Just Another Day" has me humming and happy. I can imagine the town continuing on today. They support themselves through patents and products which fund their crazy research ideas. The government probably still does come to them with projects but they chose which ones to work on. No more threats from army commandos or obnoxious generals. If Eureka scientists don't want the project or like where it's going, they show the general to the door.

I imagine Henry refuses weapons projects out of principle. I can even see them trying another Astraeus mission. They have the technology and the training. God knows the US government isn't putting the funding into NASA anymore.

I can see Zoe finishing Med school and returning to Eureka for her residency. I can even see Holly returning for some medical problem and posing a unique challenge since she is really a cyborg. Maybe even Zoe's old boyfriend Lucas returns to work on the Holly problem with his engineering skills.

And yeah I can see that whimsical mailbox outside S.A.R.A.H.'s bunker marked "The Carters". Inside you have Kevin getting ready for his HS graduation. Jenna is starting school and is already smarter than her classmates. (She probably even has her biological father's snarky wit.) And Baby Carter is a toddler who seems crushingly normal but really holds everyone together with his common sense skills.

The one thing I left out of my binge watch was the Christmas specials. To me, they are best enjoyed outside the regular season stories. I enjoy the first one after Season 3 before the timeline shift. (It makes more sense that Carter started to think of Eureka as "home" long before the timeshift arc.) And the second one is the first Christmas the Carters spent together as a whole family. (I just overlook the fact Grace and Zane aren't there and there's no ring on Allison's finger.)