Day Two Hundred and Forty-one - Numb3rs: Season 2, Episode 24, "I think I have a problem."

You know, I think it's pretty safe to say that Numb3rs is a guilty pleasure of mine now.

It's so cheesy how they spring a new math concept on you every week in the form of Charlie or Larry or Amita shipping a silly metaphor to the relative dunces of the FBI. I do like how Megan (Dianne Farr) is sharp enough to see where the explanation is going while Colby and Sinclair play the role of jock meatheads.

Still, the regular routine of math, metaphor, joke isn't the focus of this particular episode, it being the finale of the second season. No, the main thrust of the episode, aside from the rather throwaway murder mystery, is Charlie's fixation with a series of dreams he has concerning the possible loss of his father and the actual loss of his mother... who died before the series started.

Mrs.Eppes (played by JoBeth Williams) shows up as a possible manifestation of Charlie's unresolved guilt for depriving his brother Don of her company and support while she took the younger Eppes to college at Princeton during his teen years. She also happens to show up, no doubt at Charlie's instigation, in Alan's (Judd Hirsch) dreams to reconnect and assuage his own issues.

I'm not exactly the most spiritual of people, but I do find it nice that, while Larry and Charlie wrestle with the meaning of dreams and the dearly departed showing up in them, there's an immediate acceptance from Alan that doesn't question... and also leaves the idea open (albeit unsaid) that it really is the ghost of Margaret Eppes visiting her boys from beyond the grave.

For sure, I'm a rationalist... but I also live in a state of semi-wonder that likes to take a small measure of solace at the mere possibility, however remote, of an afterlife. Scientifically, there's no evidence that the light at the end of the tunnel is more than a phenomena of an oxygen deprived brain, but the romantic in me likes to believe there's something more, and this episode leaves that possibility unmolested.

Getting back to the mystery? Blah. The only interesting part was Don's near repeat of the climax scene from Silence of the Lambs (what is it with FBI agents not waiting for backup)? The serial killer videotaping himself and his reasons for going on his spree are annoyingly stereotypical in their creepyness. Even Megan voicing her distaste at his antics and her desire to see him get the chair are way too "Crime Drama 101."

It's weird how the episode makes me happy and mad at the same time, but not that surprising... and is probably the main reason why Numb3rs shall ever be just a guilty pleasure for me.

One last note... Olympia Dukakis is thoroughly underutilized in this episode. What a terrible guest role for her. Shame on you guys, Numb3rs casting director and her agent.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Twenty-four - Numb3rs: Season 2, Episode 10, "Wait a minute... the murder was a tool of protest?"

It's a little difficult getting back into the swing of things after my working vacation down at Connie Mack. While it didn't interfere with my Couchbound blogging (in fact, I was able to watch quite a few movies I didn't feel I had time for normally), I've certainly gotten a bit too used to sleeping in and watching shows and movies veeeeeery late at night.

To that effect, today I needed to return to my normal schedule... and that meant that I couldn't watch anything wacky or necessarily needful of my complete attention.

This fact brought be back to Numb3rs.

I might've gone with BONES or perhaps more Burn Notice, but I wasn't really in the mood for the torture of the former... and, as cheesy as it is, I've never actually seen the episodes of season 6 of the latter, so Numb3rs it had to be.

Let me say first that this particular episode managed to surprise me with its choice of ultimate villain. While I deftly dodged the initial red herring, the guest character that I had pegged managed to not be the murderer and I am both impressed and appalled.

I mean, as much as Numb3rs tries to be smart with its gimmick of math and logic being the primary crime-fighting techniques, it's still a rather predictable weekly procedural. It's very rare for the true criminal not to be easily guessed at if his/her identity is still unknown by the end of the second (if not first) act.

That said, they through me for a loop with this one... especially considering the ultimate motive didn't seem to make any real sense. I mean, the message that the killer was trying to convey was pointed towards the people who had a vested interest in protecting the same things that the killer was, just for different reasons. It really felt like the writers dropped the ball here and I don't just say that due to my own hubris at having guessed wrong. The whole resolution just felt... off.

Still, there are a few redeeming qualities in the episode. More screen time for my favorite professor, Larry (Peter MacNichol), and the subtle vibes he puts off towards this season's new female supporting character, Agent Megan Reeves (Diane Farr). While there were more definite sparks in the episode previous, I prefer the slow, subtle burn at this point in their courtship... which leads me to the second surprise of the episode: that Megan wasn't invited to Larry's send-off house party.

While, yes, no one else from the FBI was invited besides Don (Rob Morrow), it still would've been a nice nod towards his attempts at wooing the intriguing profiler.

As ever, the series is a quaint and harmless procedural whose only redeeming aspects are its occasionally interesting math gimmicks and series arcing character relationships, but it was certainly what I needed today... you know, aside from a stiff drink while relaxing in a tropical locale.

One of these days I'll take an actual vacation again. I can't say I haven't in recent years as I did visit my sister in Alaska last October... I'm just dying to take another one! ;)

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Thirteen - Numb3rs: Season 2, Episode 6, "I wasn't going to watch this, but..."

...with Scott Cohen's 10th Kingdom Leaving the Queue, I kinda felt the need to binge on his work lately.

The man gets around. He had a major role on Gilmore Girls for several seasons, as well as recurring roles on NYPD Blue, Law&Order, and bit parts in Castle, CSI, etc.. He's a solid character actor who can do rogue cops pretty well.

As such, he showed up in this episode of Numb3rs as a Homeland Security agent who acts as a gobetween for his pompous boss (played by John Heard) and Don, et al.

Like most Numb3rs episodes, the mystery is boring and the math isn't as interesting as it could be, still just a gimmick to pull Charlie and Larry into explaining concepts using layman's metaphors to the meatheads at the FBI (which should be ironic, considering the educational requirements of the FBI)... personified most often by former soldier Colby Granger (Dylan Bruno) who is a new addition this season.

No, what's interesting to me about this episode, aside from the bit part for Scott Cohen, is the past being dredged up when one of Charlie's high school crushes borrows the family house (now Charlie's house since he bought it off his father last season) for her wedding. It seems, way back in the day, she was his lab partner... in the same class with Don as Charlie skipped quite a few grades and they graduated together.

The rivalry was tense enough that apparently they had a wrestling match over who would get to take her to the prom, Don being the more physically fit as an eighteen-year-old, obviously won.

This bit of a grudge between them from yesteryear really pulled at my heartstrings because I, too, had a very uncomfortable high school life. Sure, I wasn't a 13 year old senior, but I could definitely relate to being the outsider that Charlie certainly was and feeling the angst and resentment that he apparently did.

Of course, since they're on such better terms nowadays, they easily get over it while reminiscing over old yearbooks and lasagne (which has a hilarious headshot of David Krumholtz from what looks to be his 10 Things I Hate About You era), but it made the episode worth watching to me.

Overall, it's all just your standard procedural fare, but it's easy enough to watch and still not as annoying as BONES. I just wish that Gilmore Girls was streaming so that I could've gotten my Cohen fix that way, instead.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Nine - Numb3rs: Season 2, Episode 2, "Awkwaaaaarrrdddd~"

I wanted to talk about this episode of Numb3rs not because of its weekly mystery, which is dull and has boring/overly-convenient math, but because it features the first official act acknowledging the series arcing shippage of Charlie and Amita.

After hinting about it almost the entirety of the half-sized first season (13 episodes instead of the standard 22-24), Charlie finally gets up the nerve to ask Amita out, to which she instantly agrees. It's not the actual question and answer that got to me, it's the subtle little gasp she emits when he praises an idea of hers.

It's such a simple little tell on her part, but it still manages to give me chills (plus, her cute little twintails didn't hurt, either). After that, the rest of the episode sort of breezed by me.

Sure, there was the meh mystery itself, centering on a botched jewel heist, which uncovers a kidnapping, which leads to bookies, and much worse... that, I can easily let wash over into nothingness. It doesn't matter.

What did matter were the progressive scenes of Charlie and Amita's progress, or lack thereof.

See, the date doesn't go well. After promising not to talk about work... which, for both of them, IS math (and is pretty much the only thing that they're passionate about)... the find that they really can't seem to talk about anything BUT math. This, of course, turns the date into a series of awkward sips of wine and picking at salads.

They're both working on Don's case, of course, so things get awkward while crunching numbers in a subsequent scene and it's not until the end of the episode that wise old Peter MacNicol swoops in to state what should be obvious to the both of them, granted he only mentions it to Charlie while the two are hovering over a pool hockey table: they communicate beautifully via math... so what if that's all they have to talk about (at least, so far)?

It's a great statement both for it's immediacy to their relationship and as an overall universal truth... math is the language of the universe! Having it so that two TV geniuses flirt with it is all the better.

Yes, Numb3rs is a pretty generic crime drama and the math hooks grow stale after a while, but it's nice to see awkward supernerds do their mating dances... mainly because I'm a supernerd of a different sort and it gives little lonely me hope.

And that's television in a nutshell, folks... keeping the flames alive for yet another day!

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Eighty-one - Numb3rs: Season 1, Episode 8, "And, thusly, we fall into the procedural rut."

Numb3rs isn't alone in the company of shows that get comfortable in their routines and overlook the pitfalls they walk into as a 20+-episode-a-year procedural. BONES, however strong and admirable its quirky, female lead, is a much worse example of this sort of thing.

Still, I have to wonder what the writers were thinking by overlooking the obvious and being so damnably blatant with their true killer.

This episode follows Don and Charlie as they try and track down a killer who may have let an innocent man take the fall for their own crime, thanks to coincidences and flawed science. It's a case that rattles Don's chain as well as our own confidence in the certainties of forensic science.

There's actually a real pertinent message about the faith we put in our experts to be had here... if it wasn't muffled but the inane Keystone Kops routine that the FBI goes through in this episode from almost the first minute on the scene. It's weird how incompetent writing can overshadow shoddy science.

I speak, of course, of the actual killer.

Not to spoil, but like so many procedural writers before them, this episode's authors made it so the true culprit was painfully obvious from almost the moment you met him. Not because he was an other and not necessarily because he seems innocuous and was introduced early (that being a standard trope), but because any rational person would begin to question him the moment his story came into doubt.

When said witness calls into question another suspects alibi... which may or may not be solid, said witness should've been followed up, but no, while the rest of the audience (I hope) knew, just knew, what was going on off-screen, the rest of the characters are off chasing fruitless leads.

Then there's the oblique evidence... why does no one ever make the connection of the garrote wire when we're shown quite a few instances of it throughout the episode WHICH CONNECT THE WITNESS TO BOTH CRIMES!

Sorry.

I get just a bit hot under the collar when supposedly smarter shows dumb things down to this level and show willful ignorance to their own clues all for the sake of filling time. Cause that's the sad fact of this episode of Numb3rs. If anyone had made the connection between the witness' profession and the easy access to wire it allows, the show would've been over in ten minutes flat.

But we can't have that with an hour long, prime time procedural, can we?

I think the only saving grace for this particular 40-some-odd minutes (Netflix doesn't have commercials, remember) of mystery entertainment is the mild phase of healthy self-doubt that Don goes through. Sure, it's muted by the sheer incompetence that the freakin' FBI shows this episode, but hey... at least Charlie manages to insert some well needed doubt into the certitude of the bureaucratic machine that is our Justice System.

One or two bad episodes do not a horrible series make, though... I got my nice little moment of Peter MacNicol and a brief bit with the ever beautiful Navi Rawat (though, she didn't really get to shine as a character, just as a hood ornimant this epi >:( ).

As always, still better than BONES, I just wish they hadn't made it so damned easy (that's a Tobolowsky reference, btw).

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Seventy-three - Numb3rs: Season 1, Episode 6, "wait... this feels more like a 2nd episode."

Alright, this is one of those weird instances where you know... you just know... that an episode is being aired out of order.

Maybe not quite as obvious as the Firefly and Clerks: The Animated Series debacles around the turn of the millennium, this still felt entirely too out of place showing up here instead of where it was actually supposed to be, my guess being as the immediate followup to the pilot.

Why do I say that?

Because of Navi Rawat, pure and simple.

I can only assume that they wanted to delay raising the issue of her character Amita's burgeoning sexual tension with series star Charlie (David Krumbholtz, who has his own Firefly connection). Maybe the showrunners were worried that too much romance out of the gate would unbalance the next couple of episodes, from which she is conspicuously absent, or maybe they wanted to show a more vulnerable, eccentric Charlie before thrusting a romantic subplot on him.

Honestly, I don't know, as even my gut feeling that this is being shown out of order is just that... a feeling, pure speculation, with nothing solid to back it up other than intuition.

Still....

In this episode, Charlie and Don are searching for a rail terrorist who has been sabotaging trains and recreating famous accidents in order to discredit the companies that run the system. Most of the math hoodoo in this on is basic pattern recognition as Charlie is brought in to decode the only consistent clue left at each scene, a paper covered in numbers.

Eventually, over the course of the romantic subplot between Charlie and Amita, they match most of the numbers to the recreated accidents, save for a few which point to a nasty one in the making.

As usual, most of the interesting moments in Numb3rs come from the side characters at home and the university, namely Judd Hirsch's father figure and Peter MacNichol's mentor role. They both have droll insights even as they deal with their own problems.

I especially loved this one moment at the end of the show when Don thanks Amita for her hard work solving the case away from everyone else at the Epps home. Charlie looks over with this look of, I don't know... confusion? Terror? At the thought, perhaps, of Don making a play for his potential girlfriend (their father having earlier warning Charlie that he might let her slip away if he doesn't act soon).

It's subtle little moments like that which really make me happy with the series. It's not the greatest procedural ever... but, of course, it's still better than BONES, even out of order.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Sixty-one - Numb3rs: Season 1, Episode 2, "Exceptional people deal with stress in exceptional ways."

As cheesy and dumbed down as the math is on Numb3rs, I definitely like it more than most procedurals due to episodes like this where Charlie (David Krumholtz) almost folds in on himself mentally when confronted with a near complete lack of control of a situation he helped create.

See, he gave the FBI a math model that helped his brother Don (Rob Morrow... who I still prefer as Joel) track down a pair of non-violent bank robbers, who suddenly turn vicious and homicidal when they're caught as it turns out that the robberies were just a distraction from their true crime. Charlie's model helped get a generic red shirt agent killed and gave his brother a mild case of the "almost killeds."

It's your typical TV close shave for Don, so the audience is generally immune to such things knowing that there's no way a safe, serialized procedural would kill one of its leads so soon. But the character Charlie doesn't know that... and thusly goes a little mental, focusing on an unsolvable equation to the detriment of all else as a distraction.

I love both Peter MacNicol and Judd Hirsch in their calming, wise mentor/father-figure roles in this episode.

Well, to be honest, I love Peter MacNicol in anything he does, but his recurring Yoda routine in the series always makes me so very happy. I especially love it when episodes literally revolve around his character, Larry, but that's not the case here, and I digress.

Numb3rs is a much more calming and engaging procedural than my other crime drama quest of the year, BONES. Yes, they're both filled with cheese and way too homogenized science, but Numb3rs manages to keep my suspension of disbelief so much better than BONES and its incessant need to go for self-indulgent gag episodes.

I think my only disappointment with this particular episode is the lack of hella-cute/hella-smart Amita (Navi Rawat). She's only mentioned in passing, though she's one of the main reasons I enjoy Numb3rs (aside from Peter MacNicol). Thankfully, she becomes more prominent as the show progresses.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Six - Numb3rs: Pilot, "Shiny, shiny math... plus murder!"

Should more math be shown?

Actually, no, it probably shouldn't... as that would probably make for bad television. Boring television. Inept television.

Because I've been watching Bones lately to have some sort of cathartic release (that still hasn't come, by the way, but I can hope), Netflix's algorithms have decided that more post-millennial police procedurals are what I need, what I crave, what I desire. Luckily for me, they haven't suggested any of the CSI's or Law & Order: SVU yet, but the week is young and I've just taken a chance on Numb3rs, so maybe that will bump the math a little.

Now, full disclosure, I did actually catch a fair amount of the early seasons of Numb3rs back when it was on the air. It was entertaining, but I mainly stayed because of its cast (namely the extremely attractive Navi Rawat). I loved Rob Morrow as Joel in Northern Exposure (now there's a title I'm extremely worried about going back to decades later) and David Krumholtz's film career has generally made me happy (if I forget The Santa Clause... darnit, remembered again).

Coming back to the pilot, I found myself reengaged. The pilot was actually quality stuff... almost worthy of a film. I was actually surprised at how well it all gelled together. This was especially the case because the pilot was a lot tighter than I remember the series as a whole.

When I was watching Numb3rs back in the day, it felt much more rote and disingenuous as the episodes piled up and story after story, crime after crime, had to be solved in flashier math-based ways. I think that was the problem with the series.

The pilot really would've worked as just a movie... all they had to do was amp the character interactions by about thirty more pages and BAM... they would've had a great crime thriller. Instead, what they have is a pretty high quality pilot with a lot of that character drama missing, waiting to be filled out as the series progressed.

And that's what you want in a pilot, right? Great chemistry that you can exploit later? The hint of a romance between Krumholtz and Rawat... family tension subtext between Morrow, Krumholtz, and Hirsch... etc., etc., etc..

Wow, I'm just so conflicted.

I want Numb3rs to be a movie without the pressures of a weekly procedural (unique hooks, teased personal drama, satisfying episodic conclusions)... but it gave me everything a good weekly show would want to build on, then rarely delivered in the remaining episodes outside the pilot.

Well, let me couch that... eventually Numb3rs DID deliver on the romance with Rawat and beefed up Peter MacNicol's role (I really just love that guy to death)... but, in the pilot, they were compressed and only hinted at.

And, I will say this for the pilot... it didn't fall into the trap of most procedurals of having the suspect be obvious (or even NON-obvious in the background). They waited till the last minute to show you his face and he definitely wasn't a background character.

Kudos for that.

Overall, I got bored with Numb3rs as a series... but the pilot had pretty much everything I could've asked for. I find it a pity that it wasn't made into a movie and that the series didn't really deliver on the promise of the pilot, but hey... even at its worst, it was still better than CSI, NCIS, and SVU.

But, guess who's still on the air after all these years?

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~