Well, the Season 3 opener for Eureka was kind of a dud. It wasn’t even funny, really. Colin Ferguson was charming as Sheriff Jack Carter and made us chuckle a few times, and several of the characters are certainly charismatic, but that was about it. The artificial intelligence (AI) concept that was central to the storyline — an attack drone outsmarts its human makers! — felt sort of recycled (am I the only one who’s tired of stories about AI growing smarter than the designer intended?).

We did get a new character — Eva Thorne (played by Frances Fisher), known in the corporate world as “The Fixer,” who has been sent by the DoD to review operations in Eureka with an eye toward streamlining (think: role of the two Bobs in Office Space). This concept in itself is questionable, but OK, I played along. Eva marched right in and frostily accused everyone of being inefficient — I can dig that. But then instead of being tucked away in an office reviewing spreadsheets and personnel files, she’s out there in all the action scenes, and then she starts to give orders and take over … which is where they lost me. I don’t buy that a business consultant has authority over law enforcement and military research facilities. I can only suspend so much disbelief.

Here’s the nutshell: On the plus side, the episode presented Eureka’s signature playful/tongue-in-cheek tone and advanced the plot in a few key ways (new evil character; Allison Blake decides to marry Nathan Stark). On the downside, it wasn’t all that interesting.

The episode had great potential, but failed to deliver. For some reason it focused on the chase (chasing this errant drone), and ran us all over town doing so. But geez, what it could have focused on — the actual mystery to the plot (who’s controlling the drone?) or Allison’s dilemma (should I marry Stark?) — those two topics could have been deeply mined, and would have been much more interesting to watch. The script (which, having been written by the producer/co-creator, should have been better) disposed of the mystery in about 2 minutes of screen time, and ditto for Allison’s decision. Special effects beat out story, for some reason, and I expect more than that from smart TV shows.

I think I’m being so hard on the episode because I can see the missed opportunities. Reviewer rating: 2 out of 5 S.A.R.A.H.s: