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Showing posts with label Numb3rs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Numb3rs. Show all posts

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Numb3ers” Conspiracy Theory” Weak, Yet Entertaining

Friday’s episode of Numb3rs – AKA Numbers – titled "Conspiracy Theory" offered a crime story that was somewhat thin. The show was more interesting watching the FBI agents, friends, and family debate famous, and maybe personal, cover-ups.

The story involves a Global Development Organization (GDO) is taking place. The GDO is labeled as a charity organization made up of wealthy and influential individuals. Because of the members' status, the group has a reputation among conspiracy theorists as a secret society that controls many world events, even the Superbowl. At first, the agents go after the conspiracy theorists themselves, but when they realize this is a dead end, they use the stereotypical nerdy conspiracy theorist to help crack the case. They are led to an extremist group, who they conveniently kill during their attempt to capture them, but one of the men has a connection to the owner of the building, and it turns out he orchestrated the whole thing just so he could force the razing of the building so he could build another building in it’s place.

Snore.

What was more fun was listening to Agents Colby Granger (Dylan Bruno) and David Sinclair (Alimi Ballard) debate the Kennedy assassination. I think those two have some of the best chemistry of any two law enforcement guys on television. Their banter is very comfortable and seems very real. I think the weak spot of the show, maybe with the series itself, is the Epps brothers themselves, who are central to every show.

As I wrote back in October, Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz) is still an annoyance. In this episode, he seems to be quite put out that Amita (Navi Rawat) didn’t tell him about a long past arrest record that she had. It was for a minor infraction that was classed as a misdemeanor, but Charlie seemed put out that she hadn’t told him about it. Amita tells him that she can’t be expected to tell him every little thing. But later, caving in, the weak Amita later decides that she has to give Charlie her diary to read, that she has kept up since a child, so he can know all there is to know about her. Now really, wasn’t that just indulging Charlie’s petulant, spoiled behavior? If he can’t handle not knowing every little thing that his girlfriend has done in her lifetime long before she met him, then he has some growing up to do.

Also bordering on becoming annoying is Charlie’s brother Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) who suddenly seems to want to rediscover his Jewish faith, and is put out that his girlfriend seems to have some skepticism about religion. Later, she gets him tickets to an event where a topic is to be discussed and debated by a rabbi and someone else not connected to a specific faith. That was a much smarter move than Amita’s, as it shows she possible wants Don to learn tolerance and respect for the opinions of others.

The mathematics in the show are always interesting, even though sometimes it seems like the hard, overly complicated way to solve a crime. Still, since it is the “hook” for the show, it has to be expected that a crime can’t be solved without some kind of mathematical solution.

Always enjoyable with the show are Judd Hirsch (as daddy Eppes) and Peter MacNicol (as Dr. Larry Fleinhardt), who both seem to have their hands full in trying to teach the Eppes boys the real lessons of life. In this episode, Alan Eppes tries to show Colby and David his own model of the Kennedy assassination and offer input on how his own friends at the time handled it, causing Colby and David decide to leave well enough alone.

Numb3rs remains an entertaining series. The cast is good, the stories passable, and the math interesting. It could be better if the Eppes brothers could learn that life isn’t all about them. I think Don is working to learn that lesson, but I think that it may be a lost cause for Charlie – as there may not be a mathematical answer to life not revolving around him!

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Saturday, October 4, 2008

Numb3ers: “High Exposure” Low Results

Numb3rs is one of those shows that I watch regularly, but I am not exactly quite sure why. I suppose the premise of the show itself – using a math genius to help solve crimes – is interesting. The problem is I can’t seem to stand the math genius, Charlie Epps (David Krumholtz). But more on this later.

Last night the season premier of Numb3rs aired, titled “High Exposure.” The story picks up some time after the events in the season finale, “When Worlds Collide.” In that episode, Charlie gets in trouble by leaking information to other scientists that belonged to man whose intentions with the information was in question by Homeland Security.

But the season opener takes the easy way out, basically glossing over Charlie’s trouble and his arrest in the finale, by making reference to the fact that he wound up just losing his FBI clearance for his actions. Of course, this loss of clearance creates problems for his FBI agent brother Don (Rob Morrow), who relies on Charlie’s math skills to help him to solve crimes.

As I mentioned last December in a review I wrote about the episode ”Chinese Box”, this show still has a tendency to insert very complicated math or even technology to solve what may be very simple problems. There are times this adds to the interest, but there are also times when I can’t believe they took such convoluted measures to solve a simple issue. They did it again in this season opener.

In this episode, “High Exposure,” two climbers are killed, and an uncut diamond is found. It is believed the climbers accidentally discovered a small plane crash of someone who stole the diamond, and someone seems to be looking for the plane crash and the rest of diamonds. During the course of the investigation, the team has to enlist Charlie’s help because they seem helpless to think out the problem without a math professor. At one point, they need Charlie just to obtain satellite imagery that they couple with topographical maps and a projected flight path of the plane to find a crashed airplane carrying uncut diamonds. Leading up to that was seeing Don in the mountains, with him watching three men holding two other climbers at gunpoint. Don uses a radio he found to distract 2 of the men, and he sneaks up on the third to help the hostages get away. The rest of the team, who is also out looking for the crashed plane, gets worried when they can’t reach Don by their radios and then they hear gunfire. What was silly about the scenario in question is that at one point Agent Ian Edgerton (Lou Diamond Phillips) says he need to take a helicopter someplace that will only take 8 minutes – and he goes to fetch Charlie for his help, and gets him to the FBI so he can work his magic with the satellite imagery and maps to find where the plan landed. Excuse me, but if he had a helicopter right there, why couldn’t they fly over the immediate area and just look for a bunch of people running and shooting, while someone else could radio to get Charlie for his brain power? It just seemed that they made the situation much more complicated than needed.

But the big annoyance to this show, oddly enough, is Charlie himself. I was getting pretty tired of his whiny, petulant behavior last season, and he seems to be showing a touch of it still. He seems to be lost because he can’t work with the FBI. Yet when the Assistant United States Attorney Robin Brooks (Michelle Nolden) offers to help him get his clearance back, he seems resistant. It isn’t until the end, sitting around the table with Don, Nolden, and Amita (Navi Rawat) that he gets the urge to fight to get his clearance back, only when he knows Don is OK with him doing so.

The show does have some good things going for it. Agents David Sinclair (Alimi Ballard) and Colby Granger (Dylan Bruno) make a great pair of agents. The new agent Nikki Betancourt (Sophina Brown, from the thankfully canceled CBS show “Shark’) who replaced Agent Megan Reeves (Diane Farr) seems like an acceptable substitute. And Peter MacNicol continues to shine in his role of Dr. Larry Fleinhardt. In fact, I think I like his input much better than Charlie’s.

All in all, it was just an OK start for the season. I wish we could have seen a little more of the melodrama that may have ensued from Charlie’s arrest in the season finale. After all, they made such a big deal about it then. Maybe they are planning a more detailed story on the issue as he tries to get his clearance returned. Either way, their treatment of the subject was a disappointment.

As a side note, we don’t refer to the show as ”Numbers” in our household, we pronounce it “Num-three-ers” because that’s how CBS writes the title. I know it’s a math show but the novelty of the title wore off on me long ago.



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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Crime Shows: Let there be light

I watch a lot of crime shows: Law & Order (original recipe, CI and SVU), CSI (Las Vegas, NY and Miami), NCIS, Numb3rs, Bones, etc. The Law & Order franchise seems the most realistic in how it presents the crime and the supporting crime scene people. But for the rest, there seems to be one glaring anomaly that I see every week:

When the crime scene investigators enter a dark room or home, why don’t they turn on the lights?

It seems in almost every show, some crime scene person scans the crime scene, using only a flashlight. Wouldn’t they get a much better view of the evidence, or even FIND more evidence, if the lights were turned on? A related mystery is when the investigator enters a scene during the full light of day, yet the room itself seems dark and sometime even hazy, requiring them to turn on the flashlight. Are places like Las Vegas, Miami, etc. so dark during the day that flashlights are needed? The L&O franchise shows seem to be fairly good in showing crime scenes in the most realistic environment, with lights on or rooms with plenty of light coming from outside.

So it’s a mystery to me. Is there some rational reason why normal lights are shunned by crime scene investigators? If someone has the answer, please enlighten ME.

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