SyFy
ORIGINAL SERIES
When a small Pacific Northwest town boasts more eccentric geniuses per capita than anywhere else in the world, and when they are each working on their own secret projects, a lot of strange things tend to happen.
JACK CARTER
Jack Carter is sharp and charming, with a quick wit and a street-smart edge. Dedicated first and foremost to his career, his separation from his wife has left him at odds with his teenage daughter, Zoe, whose brushes with the law have kept Carter nearly as busy as his day job. In fact, after one of Zoe's escapades, Carter had been driving her home to Los Angeles from Seattle when their car crashed outside the town of Eureka, setting in motion a sequence of events that resulted in him becoming the town's sheriff.
ALLISON BLAKE
Allison Blake started out as an Agent for the Department of Defense. A medical doctor, Allison served as the government liaison between Eureka and the Pentagon, and also oversaw Eureka's main laboratories.
HENRY DEACON
Henry Deacon is a true jack-of-all-trades. Masquerading as the local mechanic, his feats of engineering are a constant source of wonder and amusement. Whether outfitting Eureka's police cruisers with the latest and greatest gadgets or inventing a global air-conditioning system, Henry has the keen ability to figure out the mechanics of nearly any contraption.
DOUGLAS FARGO
Douglas Fargo is the funny, lovable and put-upon executive assistant to the director of Global Dynamics. Blessed with great intelligence but cursed with terrible luck, Fargo seems forever stuck in his subservient role, even as his pet projects showcase his unlimited potential.
DOUGLAS FARGO
Douglas Fargo is the funny, lovable and put-upon executive assistant to the director of Global Dynamics. Blessed with great intelligence but cursed with terrible luck, Fargo seems forever stuck in his subservient role, even as his pet projects showcase his unlimited potential.
REVIEW
Secret Genius: Jack Carter, Alternate Intelligences, and Eureka’s Critique of Scientific Elitism
After five seasons of sci-fi adventure-comedy riddled with speculative technology and its accompanying speculative technobabble, SyFy channel’s Eureka recently ended its final season. Eureka is set in a fictional small town—called Eureka—that doubles as a Research and Development think tank for the US Government. The town is populated by the world’s most brilliant technological and scientific minds, recruited by the government in order to produce Advanced Science with apparently limitless resources, a bastion of research where the intellectually superior can devote themselves to a life of pure intellect free from the concerns of the outside world. As a SyFy show with such a premise and recurring guest stars like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day (both rockstars in and active promoters of nerd/geek culture), Eureka caters primarily to a niche nerd/geek/(insert your label of choice here) audience.

However, we experience Eureka through the eyes not of one of its many scientific geniuses, but of its most average citizen. Jack Carter, the show’s protagonist, is remarkable for being ordinary. Thrust into the role of sheriff after an accidental arrival, Carter is immediately bemused and disoriented by his new role as one of Eureka’s few denizens of average intelligence. At first glance, Carter appears to be a classic example of a bumbling Everyman, spending much of his time confused and uncomfortable with the intellectual prowess of those around him. The curious incongruity to this narrative, however, is that in both Eureka’s “monster of the week” episodic narrative and their season-length story arcs, it is Carter who consistently rescues other characters and recognizes solutions to crises facing the town, typically through creatively piecing together information supplied by his smarter scientist friends. The writers regularly produce a deus ex Carter to save the Eureka from disaster.

But is the deus ex Carter really just a narrative cop-out? When examined more closely, could this narrative pattern have a deeper point? Like its titular town, Eureka the show could be seen as a kind of think tank for pondering the nature of the human intellect. After five seasons of Carter’s unorthodox successes, I suggest that Carter’s unique problem-solving abilities ultimately inform a more nuanced theory of human intelligence than the traditional scientific mindset upheld by Eureka’s geniuses and, by extension, the show’s audience. In Carter’s incongruently savvy heroism, Eureka deploys a carefully constructed, devastating critique of the very scientific elitism that Eureka’s niche audience is likely to endorse.
We are the network’s golden child in every way, except profit margins. Fact is, Eureka is an expensive show to make. And we could not maintain the quality of our show with the cuts it would take to make us profitable for Syfy’s new parent company.
REVIEW
‘Eureka’ Producers On Why The Show Was Canceled and How To End It
The news of Syfy canceling Eureka was a shock to everyone – especially to those who create the hit series. After briefly announcing that Syfy had ordered six episodes for Eureka season 6, plans at the network quickly changed and the series was unceremoniously given the axe.

We spoke with Eureka executive producer Bruce Miller a week before the cancelation was announced, and he showed no signs of the series being in trouble. In fact, Miller went as far as to highlight the fact that “we have a bigger audience now than we did in our first season.” This sentiment was certainly championed by co-executive producer Amy Berg following this week’s ratings – and the unfortunate news of the series being canceled.
MADE WITH ♥ AND FROONT