I always love when Deputy Jo Lupo gets more screen time on Eureka — she’s such a wonderful character (and well played by Erica Cerra). So when this episode opened with Sheriff Carter being sequestered away for a 48-hour recertification test (required by the DoD of course), leaving Lupo temporarily in charge as acting sheriff, I thought some fun was surely brewing.

Right away Lupo gets near-electrocuted — so that’s something! — and then we see her acting foggy and even rather giddy as she tries to solve likely-connected cases of equipment sabotage and theft (a missing genome spectrometer and intramuscular electrode array, for those keeping track of the show’s special brand of science). She quarrels with boyfriend Zane Donovan, arrests someone named Larry on a suspected motive of wanting to steal, and vamps her way through a sexpot rendition of “Makin’ Whoopee” that includes a big kiss for Fargo … so it’s clear that SOMETHING IS GOING ON (perhaps like me, you could intuit by this time that multiple Jo’s are walking around).

When a third theft occurs (a valuable serum from the General Dynamics infirmary) and the new “biometric DNA monitoring” security system pins all three crimes on Jo, she cleverly unravels the mystery: a scientist-gal named Julia Golden stole Jo’s identity (via the Face/Off approach to problem-solving, except dependent on DNA+electricity rather than surgery) so she could make eyes at Fargo. Then the DNA mixup goes horribly wrong, Julia can’t fix it, and both Julia and Jo face imminent danger from misfiring cells and unraveling DNA. There is a happy ending (of course), but not before an oddly melodramatic scene in which it appears that Julia will die so that Jo can live (complete with exploding lab equipment and touching last gasps) … but then it works out OK. (I guess when lab equipment explodes during a risky DNA experiment it’s still quite usable, at least one more time.)

Frankly, this episode includes all the elements of what makes a bad Eureka episode — disjointed story, explanations of the crime and the science that don’t quite work, melodramatic moments — and yet it was still entertaining. Jo’s journey and the strength of her character made it enjoyable (as did Sheriff Carter’s interspersed scenes; he’s just plain funny). When you think about it afterward, the misfires are obvious — the whole Julia Golden story doesn’t work (from motive to opportunity to action: WTF?). But the credit to Eureka (the show and the town) is that in the case of this episode, the sum is greater than the parts.

Reviewer rating: 3 out of 5 S.A.R.A.H.s