- Carter is frustrated when he's told to investigate when robotic dogs begin exploding, believing it's a waste of his time. He's even more frustrated when no one else feels the earthquakes he's experiencing.
- This week's "Eureka" was brought to you by the words "pressure" and "diamonds."
To wit: During a walk to the café, Sheriff Jack Carter is pushing his daughter Zoe to take an advanced physics class, but she's afraid it will put her under too much pressure. But he argues, "Pressure can be good for you! My mother used to say, 'Pressure can make diamonds.' Don't you want to be a diamond?"
Ugh. Good for Zoe for responding that she'd rather be a sapphire who has time to hang out with her friends...opening the door for Carter to offer that if she feels like she doesn't have enough time for great educational opportunities like this, maybe she needs to re-think the job situation. Thank you, Father Dearest!
But let's change our pitch up, because Cafe Diem, and the rest of Eureka, has gone to the dogs. (Yeah, yeah, it's a cliche, but cut us some slack here.) The dog show is coming up, and it seems like everybody's got a prize pooch in the running. The Eureka Dog Show isn't akin to the typical Westminster show, as the latter has regular dogs, whereas the town's pooches look real, but are actually robots.
Allison and Nathan walk in and make lovey talk about their wedding plans, but before they can sicken Carter, Jo gets a page about a suspected break-in.
As they're heading to the scene of the possible crime, the cops run into Dr. Chicken Lady on the street. (You may remember her from last season, when she engineered some white meat that made everyone stupid.) With her is robo-dog Fifi, the reigning champion of the show. Fifi certainly does look impressive. Up walks Dr. Young with her faux golden lab on a leash and, after her master engages in a bitter exchange with the chicken lady, Fifi starts to throw off sparks around her neck...and then, with a puff of smoke, her head pops off! I guess she's out of the running this year. Naturally Dr. Chicken Lady is the first to imply, in so many words, "Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage!" Dr. Young is mortified at what she's suggesting.
Cut to Henry's lab, where he's back and working just as Thorne (boo!) enters. He greets her with, "I've been trying to find a way to say thank you," he says.
"Good," she replies. "Because I have a task for you." This can't be good.
Meanwhile, Carter and Jo show up at the scene of the alleged break-in and chat with one Dr. Mendel, who believes the doggy lovers are targeting him for his synthetic mucus...why make synthetic snot? To create a barrier for airborne pathogens, of course. Yes, it all makes sense now.
Mendel believes there was a break-in because he found a shattered beaker on the ground, and those don't just leap off the table by themselves. Except, maybe, in this town. Mendel thinks someone wants to steal a vial of vile to make their dogs seem more realistic. (This recapper has rarely encountered a snotty dog...but, anyway...) Jack asks Jo to walk Dr. Mendel through the rest of his house to see what else has been taken, and they leave Carter alone in Mendel's lab. Suddenly he sees strange, hazy lights in the air, like a miniature Aurora Borealis. The floor starts rumbling, and mega-snot explodes all over our favorite sheriff.
Hoo-wee! Welcome to "Eureka."
Here's the thing: Only Carter felt the shakes, so when he reports the incident to Allison at Global Dynamics, she assures him that Eureka is the most stable place on Earth. Maybe he sniffed a few too many fumes! Thorne, in the meantime, would rather have Jack chase down the case of the Exploding Fifi. Seems Fifi is a nexus for major scientific breakthroughs, including compounds that increase a soldier's sense of smell so they can be one-man bomb sniffer. (What?!) So yes, it probably was sabotage.
Before Carter can get to that, Nathan pulls him aside to show him the town's central computer, maintained by one Dr. Fox. At the core of said computer are rare, speedy "logic diamonds." Apparently diamonds can store tons of data and transmit it very quickly. Nathan wants to give one to Allison as a wedding present. So why is Nathan telling this to Carter? Is this a grown man's version of a "neener neener, I got your girlfriend" type of deal? No, he needs Carter, a member of law enforcement, to sign for the rock. Oh.
Fargo, lurking nearby and very excited to move his mutt into the gap in the canine contest left open by Fifi's demise, suggests Carter seek out disgraced geologist Dr. Hood for answers about the localized quake. He heads out to Hood's woodsy lair and asks if it's possible that he felt an earthquake that nobody else did, and Hood tells him, once again, that Eureka is rock solid so, no. Just in case he checks his computer monitor, where Eureka's geological map and alerts to subterraneal disturbances are laid out for him, and says he sees nothing.
Carter jokes that next time he sees Northern Lights inside and feels tremors, he'll just leave the bar. Hood looks confused at first, then checks the display again after Carter has left.
Cut to Jo and Carter walking through town. Jo brings Carter up to speed, informing him that Fifi's owner refuses to release her remains out of fear that someone will steal her dog building secrets. That case just keeps getting better and better, Carter deadpans.
Dr. Chicken Lady believes that Dr. Young messed with her entry, and Jo asks if they should follow up. Carter slaps down that idea, griping about the fact that Eureka's townsfolk are spending a ton of money creating something that's being given away in pounds across America for free.
Meanwhile, he says, nobody seems to be interested in a earthquake that only he felt, because that's impossible.
"Because," Jo snipes, "there are NO earthquakes in Eureka."
And...cue the massive tremors. This time everyone feels them -- glass breaks, car alarms go off. There's a blue flash from the ground as the asphalt breaks and Dr. Hood's amazing mechanical mole, The Tunneler, emerges.
"Sheriff! You were right!" he says. "There's something brewing down there, and she's fixing to blow!"
Later, as Allison confronts Hood in the broken street, he explains that beneath Eureka is a pocket of magma under extreme pressure, and it could blow at any time. That's why nobody felt it but Carter -- the tremors were localized.
As Hood walks away, Allison gently but forcefully tells Carter that Hood is a mentally unstable quack. She goes on to say that years ago, Hood told the government about an impending quake that would supposedly decimate Memphis. The town was evacuated, but the quake never happened. The consensus was that Hood had cracked under the pressure. Allison leaves Carter with the warning that he needs to keep an eye on Hood.
In the diner, Henry is tutoring Zoe on acoustic physics, demonstrating how to melt copper ore with sound waves with a device the size of a pen. When Carter sits down, Henry says he has to head out to do "a troubling errand he can no longer ignore."
After Henry walks out, there's a loud squealing noise and diners bellowing in complaint. Carter turns around, and there's Dr. Hood drilling through the floor. He explains the diner is located on the optimal spot for drilling and monitoring the magma pocket's activity. Carter makes him shut it off and tells him to head home.
But Hood can see something in Carter's face. "You've talked to Allison, haven't you?" he asks. "There's something happening here. This isn't like Memphis."
Nevertheless, Carter asks him to pack up and leave, taking the Tunneler with him. Hood asks if its OK to tow it above ground, so he can wash it to prevent it from rusting.
Cut to Thorne and Henry, standing in a beautiful clearing. Thorne tells Henry she wants to build a hotel in that spot, saying that it would be perfect for their corporate visitors. The only problem is that she's heard there were problems with radiation in the area, and that's where Henry comes in. She wants him to find out where it's coming from and if it's harmful.
"Radiation is like penny candy," Henry explains. "It comes in all different kinds of flavors." He agrees to scan the area to figure it out.
In town, Carter and Jo confront Dr. Young about Fifi, who assures her she had nothing to do with the dogsplosion. When Jo insinuates that Dr. Young would be glad to have Fifi out of the competition, Dr. Young scoffs, saying that on the contrary, she was looking forward to crushing that mutt. "My dog is perfect," she coos, petting the yellow Labrador at her feet. "You should see him run. He's like Seabiscuit!" She hands Carter a frisbee. Carter throws it, and the roboLab bounds after it happily, jumping to catch it -- and exploding into blue flame.
Carter assigns Fargo to do the dogtopsy. A joyful Fargo hugs him.
The Sheriff's station: Jo watches as Allison tries on a wedding dress with the help of the engineer/designer. It's too big at first, but at the touch of a remote control's button, the dressmaker takes it in. Now it fits like a glove. That's when Allison, Jo and oh, lets call her Engineer-a Wang (what, you have a better moniker?) see hazy lights inside, and feel another quake.
Allison immediately suspects Hood, and asks to get out of the dress, but something about the tremors disabled the dress remote. Huffing angrily, she hikes up the humongous puffy skirt and trots out the door.
She and Carter meet in a field where Hood is working, and Allison's ready to shut Hood down for the tunneling she assumes caused the temblor. But Hood has an alibi: he was standing in that field at the same time the quake occurred, because he was monitoring the magma pocket. In fact, Allison and Carter were just in time to see something that would prove him right. A little more than 30 seconds later, plumes of steam spurt from ground fissures, followed by an eruption of mud and water -- all over Allison's dress. It's a mud volcano! The geologist wasn't hoodwinking them after all. Carter gets a call from Fargo to meet him in the lab.
Fargo discovered why Fifi and Robolab always won: They had logic diamonds in their circuitry, and they were too much for the robodogs to handle, so they blew. Fargo and Carter took the diamonds to Dr. Fox, who gave them a closer look and discovered that they are not the same diamonds used in the Eureka computer. They could come from any number of foreign manufacturers.
Allison calls Carter in to chat, and he enters the room as she's trying to get out of the wedding dress, without much success. Naturally he comes over and helps her with the zipper, struggling at first before finally getting it to unzip. Breathing the sigh of a woman glad to be free of her corset, she turns and thanks him. A sensitive oboe coos in the background music as she stares at him longingly.
"Is this why you called me here?" Carter asks with a grin. Allison collects herself, then marches over to the monitor to show him what she's found: The magma pocket looks like it was man-made. She suspects Hood may have manufactured it so he would have a chance to publicly restore his reputation. "Pressure makes you do crazy things," she says, and Carter gazes at her warmly, picking up the comment's dual meaning...but doing nothing about the fact that the love of his life is standing in front of him in an unzipped dress.
At Henry's, he shows Thorne the findings of his radiation scan. He's found all kind of radiation there, he says, and it's very powerful. He says he'll have to get more samples to get the specific frequencies. She tells him that's not necessary; she'll just need to find another site for her hotel.
"All this cleanup is going to cost billions, and my intention is to make money, not spend it," she says. She asks Henry not to mention his findings, and he assures her that he's good at keeping secrets. Carter, in the meantime, goes out to visit Hood and casually suggests that he might have created the magma pocket himself, which Hood dismisses out of hand. As their conversation continues, Carter shares the story about the dogs and the logic diamonds, and Hood offers to scan one to see where they come from. Every diamond has a unique signature, he explained, traceable to their origin. Handily, Carter is carrying one of the rocks, which Hood puts into his scanner and...wait, that can't be right.
The computer says it was made in Eureka. The town never had diamond mines.
But it did have a coal mine.
Carter, Jo and Hood head into the old coal mine, and once they reach a specific area, notice the walls are sparkling with raw diamonds. Hood puts it together: Someone's creating that ice. Suddenly the air around them starts to get all wavy, and Hood is squarely in the middle of what looks like a concentrated blast of invisible energy. Carter, noticing the waves coming from a machine on the wall, grabs an ax that happens to be nearby (Eureka's a town full of handy stuff) and chops his way through the power cord.
Hood explains it was a sound wave generator, much like the tiny one Henry used in the diner during Allison's tutorial. See how it all comes together? Except in this case, it was being used to cook the mine's coal into logic diamonds. Trouble is, the sound waves also were melting the rock behind it. Melted rock creates magma. And where magma is under pressure you get--ding ding ding! A volcano.
Back at Global Dynamics, Allison tells Carter there are only six people in the world who know how to make logic diamonds. The United States is the only country that has them, and it's about 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. And one of the people who can make 'em is...Dr. Fox!
Caught, the Fox monologues about the frustration of spending her career trying to do something great for humanity. She never had a way to test the effectiveness of the diamonds. That's why she put them in the dogs -- they're the best test subjects for real world scenarios. So , that mystery is solved. What about the magma pocket she created? The monitors indicate it's under incredible pressure and could blow Eureka apart.
Carter suggests relieving the pressure by lancing it like a zit, perhaps driving it into Eureka Lake to cool off? Nathan, as usual, scoffs. Great idea, but first they have to find it. Oh, if only they had a way to sniff out a magma rock---hold on, there. What about Fifi the superdog? She has the built-in ability to sniff out explosives, right?
Carter persuades the owner to allow Fifi to follow her nose to the magma, handing her a vial of Dr. Mendel's super-snot to amplify her sniffer. Oh, just go with it.
Carter and Nathan take Fifi to the Tunneler and head underground. Not a moment too soon, either: There are methane vents popping up all over town. Nathan thinks Fifi is leading them on a wild goose chase, but as it turns out, she hits it right on the nose. They arrive at the precise moment the magma's about to break through the rock wall. Carter summons Nathan and Fifi back into the Tunneler and he floors it, beating cheeks to the lake with hot magma on the Tunneler's tail. It looks like the magma rapids are going to overtake them...but fortunately, they break on through, and the magma shoots out into the cold open air, briefly becoming lava (as Nathan groused to Carter many times, it's magma when its underground, lava when above) before it hits the water and turns into, if your recapper remembers her geology book learnin' correctly, igneous rock.
The day is saved. The crew heads to the diner for a celebratory drink. Nathan grudgingly congratulates Carter for a job well done. Fargo brings in his dog, which finally won first prize without Fifi and Dr. Young's pooches in the running. The dog celebrates by peeing on the floor. Wait a minute...robodogs don't pee! Oh, Fargo, you naughty scamp.
Later, Henry visits Carter at the office. Carter asks about the troubling errand, wondering if he ever finished it. Henry says, "Indeed I did." And tries to leave it at that.
Carter won't let him. "How's Thorne?" he says grimly.
Henry gives him credit for being so perceptive, and Carter simply explains that he knows her type, and they're never up to any good.
Henry spills about the radiation survey and asks if Carter has ever heard of bariogenic radiation. Carter says no, and Henry explains that's because it wasn't thought to exist. But he found some, just a trace. He offers to run Carter through the data in his garage the next day.
Carter thanks him for being on his side. Henry says, "Hey...I do not keep secrets from my friends."
Amazingly, Henry's pants do not burst into flame...because he adds, "Any more."
At home, Sarah greets Carter by reminding him of his plan to do aerobic exercise followed by bill paying. He mumbles he's going to take the night off.
"Good idea!" Sarah says. "Stress is America's number one health problem!"
Carter mumbles, "Drop dead. " That's met with, " Followed closely by sarcasm!"
Zoe comes in and says she's going to study, because she really wants to get an A on her physics quiz. Carter gently tells her to do her best and asks if he can help her study. "Sure," Zoe says. "How much do you know about calculating electron mass?"
Well, nothing. But he suggests everything would be easier with pizza. Zoe smiles at this offer of impromptu father daughter time, and sits down.
"Extra mushrooms, right?" dad asks.
"You know me so well," Zoe replies, to which Carter softly says, "Awesome."
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