By John Keegan

Rumors of Alaric’s impending demise, based on the actor’s upcoming schedule, have been running rampant for quite some time. So it’s only natural that his character arc this season should lead to a death scene. It provides the season with one of its more poignant farewells in quite some time, and sets the stage for an emotionally draining season finale.

By John Keegan and Gregg Wright

Now that it's clear where the Astraeus crew is located, the season can move onto the matter of what's going on back in the real Eureka. "The Real Thing" splits its time between two parallel stories: Barlowe and her team must work to prevent their subjects from discovering that their world is a deception, while Carter and the rest of the townsfolk continue their search for the missing crew. I have no qualms with admitting that I was more engaged by the events occurring in the "real world". However, the virtual Eureka does leave us with an unusually tragic ending that characters will likely be feeling the repercussions of for quite some time. Let it not be said that "Eureka" is afraid to go dark when the story calls for it.

By John Keegan

By the time this episode was over, I was completely befuddled. Not by the plot; that was simple enough that Jordan had plenty to opportunity to focus on the more important element of character development. Not by the complete rewrite of history; the show had long since deviated from the historical record, so why not take it even further? No, the real confusion was why this episode was so much better than almost anything “The Borgias” has done to date.

By John Keegan and Henry Tran

I think the fact that this episode had four credited writers kept it from being very focused. There is a lot going on here and the show felt the need to check in on all of it. The central theme is something that has been explored on this show a lot: Lawyers are corporate and evil and bloodthirsty. It takes a judge going off the bench to get defended against prosecutorial misconduct to see that. It's really nothing new.

By John Keegan

Considering the fact that I was ready to give this show up for good, I was surprised to see that this episode might have actually delivered a legitimate game-changer. Unfortunately, this is where the reputation of the showrunner can be a distinct disadvantage: having seen Tim Kring fail utterly at long-form storytelling with “Heroes”, is there reason to trust him to do better this time?

By John Keegan and Gregg Wright

The war rages on, as we so clearly see in the opening scene of the episode. It's understandable that "Game of Thrones" tends to cut away during the actual battles, given the budgetary constraints of the medium. "Thrones" has typically done a pretty satisfactory job of working around these constraints, to the point that I don't even feel bothered when I don't get a full-blown battle sequence. The battles aren't really where the most important story developments occur, anyway (though I'll admit that I wouldn't mind seeing at least one actual on-screen battle at some point during the season). More important than the battle is the chance meeting between Robb Stark and a rather attractive battlefield nurse the next morning.