| Before I Forget | |
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| Air date | August 1, 2006 |
| Written by | John Rogers (teleplay) & Karl Schaefer (story) |
| Directed by | Michael Robison |
| Episode guide | |
| Preceded by "Many Happy Returns" |
Followed by "Alienated" |
| Cast | Transcript | |
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| Season 1 | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | |
| Season 2 | ||||||
"Before I Forget" is the third episode of the first season of Eureka.
Synopsis[]
Occurrences of short-term memory loss begin when visiting scientists hit town, and Jack has to determine the cause while not letting down Zoe who is acting in a school play.
Plot[]
Jason Anderson and his wife Kim have returned to Eureka in order to complete a project involving body armor for the Department of Defense. The two are old friends of Henry's and recruit him to help out with their work. Although the two have perfected the kinetic absorption of the force field, the field has trouble converting thermal energy from fire and keeps causing it to burst into flames when napalm is applied.
Meanwhile, Jack attempts to win his daughter Zoe's affections by putting together her costume for her part in the play 'A Midsummer Night's Invasion (Shakespeare with a Eureka twist, reimagined by prepubescent genius, Putnam) and delivering it to her. While on his way to the school, he passes Jason's car with Beverly in the passenger seat. Jack pulls them over because Jason is driving way over the speed limit. Beverly tells Jason that they can't be seen together, and Jason says he'll take care of it. Jack goes to get his ticket book and calls Jo for backup. However, Jo arrives what appears to be only seconds later to find Jack standing alone by his car with no memory of why he's there or why he called her. Meanwhile, Jason and Beverly have disappeared.
At the lab, Kim also notices a sudden strange bump in time, but her memory of it is gone before it registers. Henry also notices it when Jason solves their algorithm, and he burns his hand on a coffee pot that he had been on his way to make when time jumped for him.
At the police station, Jack swears that something is wrong and it's not just him having a "senior moment." He remembers that he still has Zoe's costume in his car and races out to get it to her, but before he gets far, he runs into Henry. They come to the same conclusion about "losing time" and Jack realizes that although the ticket he wrote for someone that he pulled over is missing, the impression is still in the pad. He pulls a license plate which matches up with Jason's car. Jack, Henry, and Jo go to the cafe to confront Jason, but he again flashes their memories and makes it look like Jack shot Henry while they're suffering the aftereffects of being mind-wiped.
While watching Zoe and Putnam, a 12-year-old senior and director of the play, rehearse in the play, Jack realizes again that someone has done something to fool with his memories. In the sheriff's office, Jack finds the license plate note that he wrote before the mind-wipe that he doesn't remember writing. He suspects Jason's involvement and confronts him outside of Global Dynamics but is arrested for assault and locked in a cell so that he won't interrupt the field testing. During his therapy session with Beverly, he comes to the conclusion that he needs to see Henry, but she won't let him out of his cell for another 50 minutes.
Meanwhile, Kim has figured out that Jason has been erasing her memory. To prove her theory, she erases part of the board and demands that he solve the problem again. She tells him that she knows how he erased the board and their memories after he saw that the solved it, so he could come back in and solve it again to get the glory. He searches for his memory erasing device, but Kim has already stolen it and used it against him. Jack gets out of jail and gives Henry his theory about Jason and the device, which Henry recognizes as something he created 20 years ago with Jason. The device erases short-term memory before it can imprint as long-term memory. They come to the same conclusion as Kim did, which she admits to before erasing everyone's memories in Allison's office, while she puts her husband in the path of a faulty test of the force-field vest.
However, because Jo attached a hidden camera to Jack, she saw what happened and replays the incident. Jack gets to the control room on time to stop the test from going through and Henry attempts to convince Kim to stay in Eureka. At the time of the test, Jason admits that his wife is the real genius when he fears that Kim sabotaged the programming for the vest. It turns out that she only sabotaged it enough to give him a jolt.
Memorable Quotes[]
- Carter: I went back to check some of my own, personal files, and they've been classified. I mean, my files.
- Allison: (grinning) It's not my fault that there are things about yourself that you're just not cleared to know.
- Carter: Yeah, I'd hate to stumble across something that if I told me, I'd have to kill me.
- Carter: How are you so strong?!
- Jo: I'm small...but I'm scrappy.
- Zoe: I was up all night reading Shakespeare!
- Carter: Uh-huh. You're really into the school play, huh?
- Zoe: Yeah, you know, um, I think drama club is really helping me find myself... emotionally. Um, I feel like I'm *really starting to fit in.
- Carter: How many classes do you get to skip for rehearsal?
- Zoe: Last period every day, including geometry. Love drama.
- Jo: My mom used to make my costumes.
- Carter: You used to do theater?
- Jo: Believe it or not, Carter, I didn't have childhood dreams of becoming a commando.
- Carter: So, you went from being told to break a leg, to actually breaking them?
- Carter: We're being Puck-ed with.
- Jo: You're argument is so strong its almost petty of me to ask: how?
- Carter: He's got a thing.
- Jo: A thing
- Carter: Yeah. A-a-a gizmo, a device. Has to be a device.
- Jo: Do you have a piece of device-oriented evidence?
- Carter: I figured it all out. I know what you're up to.
- Jason Anderson: In regards to...?
- Carter: I know that you have a device that can...create a wormhole, or, uh, bend time, or make you invisible...or a wormholing, time-bending, invisibling device, that shields you from the mind.
- Stark: Yes, he said "invisibling".
Notes[]
- The license plate on Jason's car is NID-563. The letters NID may refer to the organization in Stargate SG-1.
- The enfant terrible of the theater is presumably named for British film producer David Puttnam.