This week on Surface or, as I...

This week on Surface or, as I prefer to call it, "Lake Bell Has Really Tan Legs," we learn several more key elements in the sea monster mystery. Perhaps most important: You may think you're safe if you move your water-sport shenanigans to a freshwater lake, but apparently the ground can still open up and create a bottomless whirlpool of death. OK, oceans bad. Lakes bad. We can still hang out at Yellowstone, right? Wrong. Old Faithful's trying something a little new this year, and it's called spewing molten lava. Sorry, campers.

So Miles is still having big electrocute-y fun with little Nimrod, and Laura's trying to get her career back on track by, uh, waiting tables and holding clandestine meetings with Creepy All-Knowing Scientist Guy. But this episode's high drama pretty much belongs to Rich, who isn't handling his brother's death all that well. He comes off looking pretty normal when you compare him to the other nut jobs trying to uncover the world's Hidden Biology from the "Dinosaurs in the Bible" guy to the "Prisoner in the Aquatic City" guy. See, Fisherman Rich is crazy, but he's not Cryptozoology Conference Crazy. Or at least I thought he wasn't, until he had himself a 'sode standing over a puddle in a parking lot. (And I'd be remiss if I failed to mention his near-breakdown at the water cooler, since, you know, this is the Watercooler. Trippy.)

Buzzword this episode: firefly. As in, it's what the sea beasties light up like. And I'm a big enough geek that my immediate response is "Firefly! Fridays at 7/6 Central on Sci Fi, and in theaters now as Serenity." Either I've actually become a walking TV Guide or my allegiance to Joss Whedon has finally taken over my cerebral cortex. I'm not complaining.