Eureka & Chuck: the shows where the only permanently dead major characters are straight white dudes
(Well, it's true, unless I've forgotten characters...)
A few weeks ago I finished the last season of Chuck. It had it's ups and downs but was largely pretty fun. Not as good as the first 2 or 4th seasons but better than the third. This week I watched the final season of Eureka (glad I was warned about the beginning of the season, always happy to see Beverley, amused that they thought we'd be shocked by the Henry reveal towards the end.) And the last couple episodes of both did the same thing with a female character that (1) is very uncommon (and on the final 5th season of each, at that...), (2) didn't exactly thrill me, but didn't make me want to throw things either.
Through very different means, Sarah in Chuck and Holly in Eureka lose their memories (but both apparently only the memories pertaining to their time on the show), are implied to be slowly regaining them, and the "it'll be ok, she'll get them all back eventually" scene involves smooching her love interest. I completely get the romantic/emotional appeal (and am not immune) but...hem.
Eureka, I think, does it better than Chuck. Not necessarily because of better writing, but because it isn't the central emotional crisis on the finale. Most of that with Holly was resolved: she's alive again, her mind is stable and free of influene and she's in a body that's able to sustain her. Not having memories of the last year of her life (which includes being murdered) is harsh but compared to her other post-death options and what it took to even get her there, it doesn't seem so bad. (Not that it isn't bad, but in comparison...) it's also strongly implied that spending the day talking to people in Eureka has jogged her memory enough that she at least has the basics back.
In Chuck, Sarah's memory loss is actually the central crisis on the last few episodes, both emotionally and in terms of plot. By the end ofthe next to last episodes, she's accepted that what everyone is telling her about her missing years is true (via recordings of her own reports), and by the end of the last episode, she's remembered 1 thing (an element of a mission) of the last 5 years, and goes to a place important to her and Chuck but doesn't seem to have any idea why she's there. Like Holly, she will get her memories back, but it could take years and when she tells Chuck to kiss her, it could be just as mucvh because he's a cute gy and it's a beach at sunset, or to get him to stop talking, as it could be that she's starting to remember more, but we really have no idea. I can see what it's supposed to do and can see why it would do it for others, but it didn't work for me, and so as much as "re-courting your amnesiac lover" might appeal to my inner 15-year-old, it didn't give me the closure I wanted.
This, friends, is what flashes through me brain while Eureka montages. (Including while Jack Carter is plummetting through a wormhole and 5 seasons flash through his eyes.)
Also, Eureka, as annoying as the Matrix-verse thing was, why did you have to choose the least interesting drama to explore? Grace was forced to kill her husband (fake, but she'd only known for about an hour) and worried that she may have been partly responsible because of past associations even beyond being incharge of the abducted mission, but you thought an out-of-nowhere love triangle in which Allison is suddenly uncharacteristical;ly jealous (to the point of pettiness) was the better move? Pthbt.