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May 24, 2013

Numb3rs: Harvest

by Jonathan Toomey, posted Jan 28th 2006 5:04PM

numb3rsThis was by far one of the better episodes this season. Very solid story that felt real (and I say that because I know I've seen stuff like this on shows like Primetime and 20/20), and it finally gave Navi Rawat (she plays Amita) a reason to be in the credited cast. That's right, we finally got to see her for a large portion of the episode as opposed to one line in the opening thirty seconds.

If you walked into a room and saw a pile of ice, a car battery, and a ton of plastic sheeting covered in blood, what would you think? Actually, scratch that... let's not go there. Don and David stumbled on to this scene in the basement of an LA hotel. As if it weren't gruesome enough, a young Indian girl was found in the back of the room. Good thing someone tipped off the FBI.

At the FBI headquarters, Amita is the only person that the victim will speak to. Turns out the language the girl was speaking in was a dialect common to the area where Amita's parents were from. She said that her sister was still missing along with two other girls. Meghan finds the sister at the hospital morgue. She died from complications that arose from kidney removal. Apparently that hotel likes to rent out its basement to black market organ harvesters. The girls had been promised money and the prospect of US citizenship if they came to America and gave up their kidneys.

Charlie ran all sorts of algorithms to analyze how fast the ice had melted in the room as well as determining all the unrecorded stops of an ambulance driver who became implicated after a bakery delivery guy ratted him out. The one stop that kept standing out for the driver was a hospital, which isn't a surprise, unless you consider that this hospital was completely out of his way. Don and Colby find out that the night manager at the hotel also worked in the morgue at that hospital. Bingo. He harvested the organs and the ambulance guy dropped the bodies off at the hospital where the other guy would go in the morning and fudge the paperwork for the person he butchered the night before.

They end up finding the sister in time and all is well. I really liked how this episode forced Amita to look at who she was and where she came from. It was interesting and at one point she got so emotional, she even kissed Charlie. It's about time. If you've been reading any of my other reviews, then you know I'm a big proponent of back story, so this episode gets a check mark in my book.

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Bec

I love this show for it's unique-ness for incorporating maths into it.

http://www.kangarootv.com/2006/01/06/numb3rs/

February 06 2006 at 7:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Penny

When Numb3ers first aired, I thought it was going to be really good
since Judd Hirsch, Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz were going to be
the main characters. No problem there, but good grief, could they
tone down the "startle effect" that David's character shows every
time "Larry" (Peter MacNichol) comes sneaking into the scene?? And
why does he (Larry/Peter) do that anyway? Its getting a bit tiresome
and predictable. In fact the entire show is predictable EVERY week.
Same scenario... case opens, call in Charlie, Larry sneaks up on
Charlie either in the garage or at school, small mention/scene with
Charlies dream-girl, Charlie & Robb tie up the case. End of episode.
How many shows can drag on and on ?? I used to watch it every week,
but its beginning to get really boring.

February 01 2006 at 12:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Penny

When Numb3ers first aired, I thought it was going to be really good since Judd Hirsch, Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz were going to be the main characters. No problem there, but good grief, could they tone down the "startle effect" that David's character shows every time "Larry" (Peter MacNichol) comes sneaking into the scene?? And why does he (Larry/Peter) do that anyway? Its getting a bit tiresome and predictable. In fact the entire show is predictable EVERY week. Same scenario... case opens, call in Charlie, Larry sneaks up on Charlie either in the garage or at school, small mention/scene with Charlies dream-girl, Charlie & Robb tie up the case. End of episode. How many shows can drag on and on ?? I used to watch it every week, but its beginning to get really boring.

February 01 2006 at 12:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Katie

Does anyone know when/if Numb3rs is coming out on DVD? I caught one episode of it last season, and it actually interested me, unlike practically any investigative crime show on the networks nowadays

January 31 2006 at 3:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daria

THEY KISSED!!!! Yeah! My dreams are true now!
Peace&Love

January 30 2006 at 1:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jim

I have to agree with JeffL. I hope the dumbing down of the math in this episode wasn't a harbinger of thigs to come.

While I can understand the need to get things done in an hour, the morgue-working hotel manager was too convenient, and the ice melting thing was a throwaway. The girl could have told them how long it had been since the organ harvesters left her there without ever needing to measure the rate at which the ice liquified.

For the first time, the math felt like a gimmick instead of part of the story. And the story itself suffered for the sake of the story arc. Character development is necessary, but not at the cost of the meat of the show.

Jim

January 30 2006 at 8:48 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JeffL

This was easily the worst episode of the entire series.

Where was the math? This is Numbers, not Law & Order: University Security. One small throw away with trying to figure out where the ambulance was going. More, please!

Where was the law? Doctor/client priveldge was violated half a dozen times without a second thought. No way the doc gives up the name of the Rich Guy waiting for the kidney. No way the FBI so easily gets the names & medical info for the entire list of people waiting for kidneys.

Worst of all, the whole time-line of the episode was ridiculous. Don & the crew show up at the hotel just as the surgeon is about the cut open the sister? Come on, that's nuts. For that to make any sense, you have to completel ignore that fact that it took days for the FBI-ies to piece everthing together, and the organ harvesters could have done thier business in a day or less. But even as drama it was a lousy attempt to manipulate the audience into feeling suspense over who would get there first. We weren't given enough reasons to care about the sister, and there wasn't enough tension in the FBI "attempts" to find the hotel room.

Bad, bad episode.

January 29 2006 at 1:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tim

You mention that the sister was found in the hospital morgue...not true, it was one of the other girls.

It was a better than average episode for this series and felt more real than some of the stuff they end up investigating.

January 28 2006 at 11:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sid

i would guess the battery was to run the medical equipment they used

you guys should chck out the movie 'dirty pretty things'

January 28 2006 at 10:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hyphenate

Originally, I think the supposition on the battery was as a method of torture. However, after seeing the episode, I would now assume it was being used as a makeshift defibrillator.

January 28 2006 at 6:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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