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As Dyslexia would have me believe, the title was “invisible.” Written by Den E Fesman, this is the second of his three-episode run, previously writing the teleplay for “Alienated.” While director Michael Grossman is known for doing a lot of work, little of it is worth mentioning. Grossman directed “Safe” from Firefly, “Showtime” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is after the show fell off more than it already did, 3 episodes of Enterprise, 5 of Charmed, 8 of Zoey 101, and a partridge in a pear tree. Am I being mean again?

After Artie Nielson calls the station, Carter is pulled away from Allison, who wants him to drop his kecks, bend over, and maybe cough if he has the time. Don’t get too excited just yet, he wants “Hello,” “My name is,” and all that meme-ery. It turns out that before Artie headed up to a secret warehouse in the middle of nowhere, he had been working at GD on molecular cell regeneration. In Carter-speak, that’s “skin go magic, no booboo.” It seems I’m in a certain mood that might make Fesman’s “Invincible” quite interesting to review sensibly.

A bit OCD, a bit autistic (though he doesn’t care for Romans or Nazis), a bit hypochondriac, and generally a weird bloke, Dr. Carl “Artie Nielson” Carlson needs a ride to work. No, really, that’s the set-up: a Weird guy asks the Sheriff to give him a ride to work, the experiment goes wrong (hardly a spoiler, it’s Eureka), and the rest is heavily redacted history. Turns out everyone wanted Carlson out long ago. This “failed” experiment results in his firing from GD, which puts him in a depressive spiral that results in him jumping off of a bridge with Sheriff Carter. Yeah, he can’t even do that alone.

Between dark mysterious plot lines with Beverly and NZT-48 being theorized only a couple of years after Alan Glynn’s The Dark Fields, Carl Carlson seems to have been written by Stan Lee. Weirdly, he was played by William Shatner halfway through. He’s genetically modified himself in a lab with a dud experiment, he’s got that alliteration in his name, and he’s played up as an annoying dorky character before becoming “normal,” albeit with telekinetic powers. This is before he gets a double that goes off to run a warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

I get it, not everyone’s going to love “Invincible,” and honestly, I can see it myself, but at the same time, I do enjoy the campy nature of it. Even if it tries to do some more serious stuff in Act 2-3. I can’t exactly pinpoint what it is, but there is something about “Invincible” that works more than I think some other camp episodes do in this sort of American comedy. It is light but has a sense of darkness that doesn’t bring it down too much, and probably most importantly, it lets the situation be the funny guy, not just the protagonist.

Far from the best episode of Eureka you’ll ever see, “Invincible” certainly has the air of a mid-season filler. The trouble with that is some of us have watched fantastic shows like Ted Lasso, where there is no wasted momentum or “fat” on the writing. To me, the story of Beverly Barrlow gets in the way this season more than it works as an arc, so when you have these fun episodes broken up by it, it isn’t always welcome.

It feels like a writer or showrunner who didn’t have confidence in the other dark, mysterious, conspiracy-laden arc in the plot, that being section 5. It just doesn’t feel concentrated, leading to me caring about one and disliking or hating the other on the way to its climax. I think part of that problem is that saying “Section 5” and showing the security surrounding it in the show is very easy, while having Beverly portrayed as both a well-meaning therapist with underhanded intentions is done very “lazily.”

We saw it last time with the Senator, we saw it in the first episode, and we keep seeing it. The time needed to say Bev is questionable is for more on-screen time than you need to tell the Section 5 plot, and the more that mystery is shown, I’m finding my interest quickly waning. That’s the problem with this type of story arc. It is supposed to be interesting, but at the end of the day, I think it takes away from what could otherwise improve or refine something like “Invincible.”

As a plot, “Invincible” does just enough to keep me from hating it as I do with most Warehouse 13 episodes, but not enough to make me say I need to rewatch this episode now and then. The most memorable thing about it is that it’s that one episode where a guy tries to kill himself, in this case, on purpose. The rest are Fargo playing with himself. Not a bad episode, but I’d hardly go out of my way to come back around any time soon. Ultimately, if you like more mid-series Doctor Who (‘05-‘09), then you’ll enjoy Eureka’s “Invincible” just enough.

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Eureka "Invincible"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Artie-Shatner
• It's dark but not too up itself.
• Vincent's one line confirms who he is.

Cons

• The script could have used a bit more refinement.