Steven Milanese

Responding to Pop Culture: Eureka (television show)

Eureka is a television show that airs on the SyFy channel and is later made available for digital streaming on hulu. Several months ago, as part of a proof of concept experiment I canceled my cable and in place of the old cable boxes installed a network of multimedia servers. The resulting network allows me to stream hi-definition digital media like hulu, to each of the televisions throughout my home. The whole system is administrated through a custom web portal developed by my business partner, Jared Lawnadales and myself. Your probably wondering what any of this has to do with the show. Well, it is precisely this type of next level technology that the show focuses on and as is often the case for Jared and I, inspires us to set out and create.

The show itself centers on the small fictional town of Eureka, Oregon. Originally founded in the 1940’s as a Top Secret army base, it was intended to facilitate the then highly classified experiments of Albert Einstein and his assistant Dr. Trevor Grant. Now decades later, the once army base has evolved into a small community of geniuses. The majority of these people are employed by Global Dynamics, a large government contracted research facility located in the center of the town. This is by no means your standard R&D lab; instead the type of advanced research that takes place at Global Dynamics can only be described as science fiction. However, while some may fixate on the fiction aspect, I prefer to look at it from a more scientific approach. Instead of saying no way, I prefer to ask why not? I truly believe that nothing is physically impossible. Since all things in existence are made up of matter and all matter can be manipulated given an applied force. Then it stands to reason that all things are possible, it’s just a matter of figuring out when and where to apply the force.

Another unique aspect of the show is the way they cast the town’s “geniuses”. Instead of the atypical intellectual socialite elite persona, the shows characters are represented as regular people, living mostly normal lives, working together to create extraordinary things. One could speculate that this is by design, seeing as Albert Einstein made some of his most profound discoveries while working as a patent clerk. I find this type of creative vision both inspiring and motivational. If more people set out intent on testing the limits of our understandings, could you imagine the limitless possibilities? This is also demonstrated by the role of Sheriff Jack Carter, who’s portrayed as a regular guy, whose straightforward problem solving approach is regularly relied upon to resolve the technological disasters caused by the town’s often-misguided geniuses.