Dead Like Me, Eureka, Who Wants to be a Superhero?

I’m kinda actually enjoying the SciFi channel now and then. Since I have a reliable way to see TV listings, I can deftly avoid accidentally tuning into Stargate – it used to be “all Stargate, all the time”, and I just can’t watch that show.
It’s a shame… I liked the movie.
Dead Like Me

Last week I caught myself watching “Dead Like Me” before the premiere of “Eureka”. I said then that “Dead” looked a lot more intriguing than the show I’d tuned in to watch. This week, they showed two episodes in front of Eureka.
“Dead Like Me” is the story of a young woman, Georgia Lass (is this a name or a description?), who dies from a freak accident and finds herself in a strange middle existence between life and death. And also, she is a Reaper – it’s her part time job to take the souls of those about to die and guide them to the afterlife. Unfortunately, this doesn’t pay the bills, so she has to take on other temp jobs to pay for a place to live. Being dead, she doesn’t have to worry about dying, but even the dead want a place to call their own.
More than her struggle to leave behind her life and accept her responsibility to guide people to the hereafter, I love her struggle to deal with the half-existence of she and her fellow reapers. They live in the world of the living, but they’re dead.
In one episode, she tries to explain to her (still living) mother who she is. But the dead look different to the living, and whatever she is trying to say comes out as nonsense – she is forgetting (permanently) what she was going to say as she says it.
I can see the show becoming dull if it’s only concerned with her getting used to being dead and taking the souls of others. On the other hand, I can’t see how the show could be worth watching if she becomes entirely cool with it and it’s just a “new dead person of the week” show. It’s worth watching now, though, and I’ll be tuning in each Tuesday to see it.
Eureka
The second episode of “Eureka” was more of the first. Supposedly, this show is the break-out hit of the summer; smart, funny, etc etc etc.
Maybe those people are seeing a different show.
How do you show “smart” on television? “Eureka” says you’re smart if you can invent a new invention that would change the world entirely if you weren’t using it selfishly. This hasn’t been the state of science fiction since Henry Kuttner was doing his “Gallegher” series back in the 40s and 50s.
Sherlock Holmes was smart. At the end of the story, he could lead you back through what you both saw and only he was smart enough to understand. I never saw MacGyver, but he was probably smart in that same television way, putting common things together in clever ways.
You don’t see anyone in Eureka being smart at all. In fact, they’re idiots. The episode was three ghost stories, and it’s good they do them now, because they’ll be off the air by the end of October.
Main plot: Husband and wife die in some accident. OR DID THEY? The wife has been seen wandering around the town very much alive, and the husband is flickering in and out of a static warp bubble antineutrino world chronosynclastic infundibulum state of suspension between the seconds and scaring the children.
Okay, we now know that, in this reality, there is an existence parallel and intertwined with our own where we exist on the even time quanta and the other on the odd time quanta. Wow! That changes how we think of all reality, time, everything! Hubby accidentally gets pushed into it while killing his wife and making his son an orphan.
But that’s no reason not to be happy!
Second ghost story: The not so dead wife. Turns out that the one who died was a COPY, made when hubby and the original wife separated. That’s right, an instant clone with all the memories of the original, except programmed to stay with dear hubby (A FATAL DECISION) and help build his dream home in Eureka! Wife sub Zero was concerned when her parents asked her about the son she never had. One of those two wives really cut their mother off.
Instant clones with all the memories of their originals who can be programmed? This is a government installation – why wouldn’t the government just clone all the scientists, program them for loyalty, and kill the originals? Why torture people at Guatanamo Bay if you can just clone them and program the clones to tell you all you need to know?
Nope. Was a throwaway plot point.
In the end she’s gonna be a mom to her clone’s kid, probably make up with her hubby of the odd-numbered seconds, too, once he gets out of the magic machine which is bringing him back to the even-numbered seconds and also making sure he doesn’t get the bends.
Third ghost story: The House of Mystery! Some whiz kid built a computer-controlled AI house in a radiation bunker at the edge of town. It’s all AI controlled – STELLA (or whatever her backronym name was. All AIs have human names made of acronyms. It’s a natural law or something.) Would I be spoiling it if I mentioned that she has the personality of a clingy, needy wife who doesn’t get out much? Like, oh, every other AI ever given a female personality?
What’s funny – and this was funny – is the teenage boy genius scientist who built it – uses his own voice talking like a girl as the computer’s voice (until Sarah Michelle Gellar has some free time to record hers), answers the 24/7 tech support hotline (him) speaking with a British accent, and obsessively watches the new sheriff through hidden cameras.
Of course, this is Eureka’s writers poking fun at the geeky, Buffy-obsessed fans who are probably watching the show.
True AI with emotions! How could that not change the ENTIRE WORLD! That grinding sound is the recycler chewing up a thrown-away plot element.
Oh and hey, Sheriff’s daughter is coming back to live with him. Didn’t see that coming. Okay. I did see it coming. Geeky scientist guy with the hidden cameras and Sheriff’s teenage daughter. I feel a laff riot coming on!
I liked Star Trek. They could pull gobbledy-gook off. Godlike beings around every corner. Transporter that can do — anything. Warp fields that can do what they can’t do with transporters. Tricorders to pick up the slack. It was silly. Even back in the 60s, “Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits” were doing real science fiction, loved and enjoyed by millions. But now it just seems old.
We’ve moved on. But Eureka hasn’t. Stuck in a technological playground one part Heinlein and two parts Horace Gold.
Who Wants to be a Superhero?
This… is actually a funny show. A dozen people who dress up in odd costumes and pretend to be superheroes – well, the premise is all “Mystery Men meet Big Brother”. Comic book legend Stan Lee assigns people tasks and orders them to turn in their costumes when they screw up through omnipresent video screens scattered through the “lair” and on personal Blackberries.
Is it real? This is about as real as the bananas on Monkey Woman’s utility belt. But it IS funny, not only as a parody of “reality TV” but as a catalog of human shortcomings – and those are ALWAYS funny.

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Made In Eureka Eureka: All Icing, No Cake The Little Mermaid Star Trek Enterprise