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© 2009 SyFy
A scene from EUREKA "Insane in the P-Brain"
Television:
TV Review: EUREKA - SEASON 3 - 'Insane at the P-Brane'
An alternate dimension gets the EUREKA treatment as Carter bonds with a newcomer to town
Grade: B-Stars: Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Jordan Hinson, Erica Cerra, Jaime Ray Newman
Writer(s): Thania St. John
Director: Steve Miner
Release Date: July 24th, 2009
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN, Contributing Writer
Published 7/26/2009
“Insane in the P-Brane” moves the EUREKA plot arc along nicely, though it doesn’t have a bold new take on the notion of alternate dimensions. To be fair, Colin Ferguson’s Sheriff Carter and Dr. Tess Fontana (Jaime Ray Newman) provide the situation with enough urgency that we can go with it for the duration.
When Carter is brought in to Global Dynamics to help Allison (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) bring a couple of squabbling scientists under control, he naturally doesn’t suspect he’ll be zapped into an alternate dimension. It looks just like this one, except nobody can hear or see Carter or his new acquaintance Tess, an old college friend of Allison’s who’s in Eureka to reopen Section Five. Carter and Tess try desperately to communicate with people in our dimension, before the device that accidentally exiled them is turned off, stranding them or worse. In a subplot, Lexi (Ever Carradine) is flummoxed when Duncan (Jeff Pangman), who fathered the twins she’s expecting, turns up in town.
“Insane” is agreeable enough. Lexi’s reticence about telling her boyfriend that she’s pregnant, though mostly played for laughs, is dragged out past the point of humor, albeit there’s an interesting payoff. Thania St. John’s script has some good scientific jargon that’s intriguing to contemplate, whether or not it could happen, and there are some well-calibrated, understated moments between Carter and Allison. For EUREKA-brand visual fun, there are also some cool effects depicting the results of the magnetic anomaly that’s causing this week’s chaos and we get more clues as to what’s going on in the recently reopened Section Five.
However, if an episode is going to the trouble of positing a whole other dimension, it seems like it should serve more of a plot function than essentially dropping a couple of characters down a well and letting them work on how to get out of it. With the exception of Joe Morton’s Henry (who doesn’t get a lot to do this time around), the mad scientists are all overly manic, though Neil Grayston as Douglas Fargo gets some mileage from playing along with Lexi’s duplicity.
Tess, who reportedly will be around for awhile, is given to non sequitur observations that are sometimes funny and sometimes try too hard. Newman has backbone and snap, though it’s hard to evaluate the chemistry with Carter (or Allison, for that matter) at this point.
This is an okay installment of EUREKA, diverting but not inspired.
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