Numb3rs: Some Thoughts

Listen, I love Fringe and I'm going to go back and finish it up as soon as I'm done writing this but after about season three and a half, it got a little boring.   So I wanted to mix it up and Numb3rs had just been sitting there, staring out at me every time I logged on to my Netflix for what seemed like years now.   One of my sisters (let's call her The Geographer) had been a major fan of the show back when it was on television-  it was like appointment television for her so I figured, why not?  So I started watching it and six seasons later, I've come up with ten thoughts about the mathematically themed series:

1.  I'm not usually one for procedural television.  It doesn't lend well to repeat viewing and the cookie cutter, paint by numbers plotting doesn't lend itself to the greatest writing on television.  Character development is frustratingly vague or, in the case of Numb3rs, occurs off camera- that said, the Numb3rs spin on the procedural formula was unique enough to hold my attention and interesting enough to carry six seasons of a television show.  So nice job there.

2.  Speaking of which, the Numb3rs spin.   I've always said that most of what I learned in high school math classes was completely useless and the whole 'you're going to use trigonometry all the time in real life' line that math teachers insisted on trying to sell you on smelled a little like bullshit to me.  Numb3rs challenges that assumption with super-genius math professor Charlie (David Krummholtz) using math to help his super-cop FBI agent older brother Don (Rob Morrow) solve crimes.   The math he uses to do it is all real- a nice bit of scientific or in this case mathematic accuracy.

3.  Rob Morrow squints.   A lot.

4.  One of the more irritating 'we're going to leave character development to your imagination' aspects of this show is the romance between Charlie (Krummholtz) and Amita (Navi Rawat.)  It just kind of happened all of a sudden and the lack of context was extremely frustrating but by the end of the series when they get married, you kind of felt the chemistry between the two of them had moved from forced to genuine.

5.  Larry, oh Larry.  Peter MacNicol was the perfect actor for this role.   Though having him act more quirky than usual for a good chunk of a season until he reveals apropos of nothing that he's going into space.   And then another 'apropos of nothing' announcement that he's going into the desert to find himself.   Which he does.   Very weird- I would have liked to see more of him.

6. One of my favorite story arcs:  the season 3 finale/season 4 premier which revealed that Colby Granger (Dylan Bruno) was a double agent (and then triple agent) working for the Chinese.  It was a beautifully unexpected twist that shock and surprise! enabled the character to grow and evolve a bit.

7.  One of my favorite characters:  Agent Megan Reeves (Diane Farr) for some reason and I don't exactly know why she left the show but I was heartbroken when she did.  She had a background in profiling, some Daddy issues (her father had wanted a boy and was disappointed when she was a girl) and ended up in a remarkably believable relationship with Charlie's sidekick friend and odd duck Larry of all people- all of which were conveyed to the audience in some excellent moments of vulnerability over the course of her tenure.

8.  Judd Hirsch.  Still remember him from Independence Day and he hasn't lost a step as Père Epps.

9.  How come nobody else got a girlfriend/boyfriend/significant other?  Colby (Dylan Bruno), David (Alimi Ballard), Liz (Aya Sumika) and Nikki (Sophina Brown) all got short shrift in the romance department over the course of the series.  To be fair, I guess Liz did date Don for awhile but that went nowhere.

10. It was a crying shame that fugitive hunting FBI Agent Joel Edgerton (Lou Diamond Phillips) didn't get more screen time- or join the show altogether.  His episodes were always standouts whenever he was on.  Ditto for Mildred Finch, Charlie's boss played by Kathy Najimy.   Josh Gad and Fisher Stevens also showed up more than once on the show but neither really clicked the way that the first two did.