(S03E05) I'm starting to get the feeling that writing for this show must be a real pain in the you know what. On the surface, a cop show. Bad guy commits crime, good guys get him. But with Numb3rs, all the writers and producers have to factor in all the mathematical equations and algorithms that Charlie, Amita, and Larry are going to use. The writers must have to spend countless hours consulting with mathematicians to determine what algebraic techniques will actually make the most sense in a given case, and then on top of all that, they have to write a story that actually incorporates them logically. It sounds tough, doesn't it?

The reason I bring all that up is because I really believe all that. It has to be tough, which is why we get episodes like this sometimes. Traffic attacks and they all seem different. Random. Or are they? Megan seemed to think they were but Charlie thought otherwise. It took almost half the show to come to a conclusion that I latched on to in the first five minutes. Every attack could be the same guy and he just switches up his method to make it look random. It just made the first half-hour incredibly slow, especially when I had such a good feeling about where it was going anyway. There's no way I'm alone in picking up on that.

The motive for the guy, once they caught him, was actually fairly creative. He was a victim of a car accident. Upon recovery he joined the local chapter of Head Trauma Survivors United, aka HTSU. However, his head trauma left him with uncontrollable rage and upon hearing the stories of his fellow chapter members, he started attacking innocent people with guns, cinder blocks, and lead pipes. But his get away plans were clever too. He had one of those official thing-a-ma-jigs that sends out infra-red pulses. Ambulances and fire-engines have them. Turns traffic lights green so you always have a clear path. Tricky, huh?

So the case was just so-so, but once again, our characters love lives seem to be taking a larger chunk of each show. Larry is now living out of his office, and despite Megan's infatuation with him, what's she going to do once she finds out he doesn't have a place to live? Amita and Charlie continue to go nowhere as well. However, we might have some pick-up with that. Amita seems to be having doubts about not taking the job at Harvard because she's having trouble dealing with co-workers who were once her professors. Now she's one of them.

Don is having issues too. We've heard a lot of talk about Robin this season. For those that don't remember, Robin was the Assistant US Attorney that Don worked with on two cases last season and they began dating. But how come we never see her? If her name is going to keep popping up, we should probably see her in an episode sooner rather than later. I only say that, because Don keeps unloading all his emotional baggage on his father and Alan seems to be getting fed up with it. Any more, and I'm not sure that Don will be able to count on his father for that outlet. Get it, count? Ha! OK, I'm done.