don eppes

(S03E14) Well, this is what I get when I ask for things. From the very first time I wrote a review for an episode of Numb3rs (and on numerous occasions since then), I've suggested ideas for making this show less of a procedural cop drama. Numb3rs could deal to take on some ongoing storylines. This show has what it takes and I absolutely hate that a show like The Unit is filling up a Tuesday night time-slot while Numb3rs flops around on Fridays.

So this is what I get. An out-of-the-blue story that has no basis for even existing.

(S03E13) Here we go again. Another Deadwood cast member makes an appearance on Numb3rs. I'm not against it -- everyone from the HBO show is a great actor. I just think it's funny how they keep popping up on Numb3rs. It must be a running joke for the producers or something:

"OK, we've landed Calamity Jane and Dan Dority. What are the chances of getting Swearengen to play a rival math professor of Charlie's?"

Add Titus Welliver (a.k.a Silas Adams) to that list. He played a crotchety NSA agent that reluctantly helped out Don and his team. I think they handled that story poorly though. Charlie was helping out the NSA instead of the FBI and that clearly put a strain on the relationship between him and his brother. I wish they had kept that tension going for a few more episodes as opposed to resolving it so quickly. Charlie and Don not getting along would have been an interesting to dynamic to develop.

(S03E12) Good start for 2007 here. This is the type of Numb3rs episode I'm talking about when I say this show could easily carry its weight on another weekday night. Edgy topic, great guest casting, and a tense story. It was all there.

It was great to see Deadwood's W. Earl Brown (aka Dan Dority) too. Once again, the cast of Deadwood strikes on a CBS drama. This is maybe the fourth time I think? Beyond that, Joshua Malina reprised his role as U.S. attorney Howard Meeks and Teri Polo guested as another investigator. Nice little West Wing reunion right there. This show is really pulling in some recognizable faces lately, huh? Not too shabby.

(S03E11) This was great Numb3rs episode. It made you think beyond just what was going on with Don and the team, especially since it dealt with such a hot topic: sex offenders. Despite the obviousness of the overall theme for this show being math, I still find it incredibly entertaining when they apply algebraic principles and theories to things that I would never think to apply them to. Credit to the writers and producing team behind Numb3rs, because the amount of research that goes into each episode must be staggering.

(S03E10) What a disturbing episode. The whole idea of a government running experiments on it's own citizens is creepy enough and it's made even harder to swallow because there's plenty of truth to it. So I guess it's pretty cool that this show was willing to tackle a taboo topic like that.

So... government ran experiments. People got killed. Don and the team caught the bad guy. Savor that brief episode description because it's all you're going to get out of me. There are tons of other things I want to talk about.

(S03E09) 13 million tons of hazardous waste. 9.6 billion dollars on fines. 1,244 disposal sites. 1 sinkhole. Bit of an Erin Brokovich feel, no? Because that's exactly what it was, but I liked it. This was a solid episode of Numb3rs.

Following a disaster at a local school's playground, Don and the team were called in. At first they couldn't understand why. Enter Joshua Malina in a his second post-West Wing role (Malina was in an episode of The Nine a few weeks ago). Here he played U.S. Attorney Howard Meeks and it's been his mission as of late to take down the construction company that built the damaged playground. He didn't realize half the kids on the playground also happened to have cancer. Uh oh.

(S03E08) After I saw the previews for this episode last week, I wasn't too excited about it. Baseball stats just seemed like too easy a topic for this show to cover. But I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty good actually.

The focus was a has-been player who was trying to make a big league comeback. So naturally he was juicing (it killed him) and there was involvement with a BALCO-type corporation. I loved how at one point there was a built-in PSA during a conversation between David and Colby. They were talking and all of a sudden Colby started listing off all the side-effects of steroid use. It was horribly cheesy and stood out like a sore thumb. Numb3rs -- watching out for America's youth.

(S03E07) Every week the previews for this show make the next installment sound like the most amazing hour of television ever conceived. That's never the case. Numb3rs is a lot like Criminal Minds. Neither show is great, but they're both good -- consistently.

This particular installment was well above par for Numb3rs. In fact, it was a pretty damn good episode and it had just about everything you could ask for from this show: romance, a great story, and it tied into a previous case which in my mind adds instant brownie points. I don't know, I just like it when they do that. To me, it makes more sense when a certain case will span a few episodes rather than the team stumbling onto something new each week. That makes sense right?

(S03E06) An epiosde all about horse racing. Makes sense since there's about a million different math related stories that could be pulled from the science of picking the right horse. Some people like Alan "The Rail Bird" Eppes just get it. Charlie, on the other hand, doesn't and when a young man is stabbed to death during a race... I could make a really bad "there's no time for horsing around" or an "all bets are off" comment but I'll restrain myself. Suffice to say that everyone is jockeying to find out whodunnit first. Sorry, couldn't resist.

(S03E03) I suppose it was only a matter of time before we got this episode. Numb3rs is a cop show and you can't have one of those without the obligatory "priceless art theft" episode. So I suppose "generic" is a suitable word to describe this installment. It was good (Numb3rs always is), but you've seen this one before.

(S03E02) I don't get why this episode wasn't called "Spree, Part 2." It was, after all, just the continuation of last week's premiere... right? So why confuse viewers into thinking that this episode may be separate from last week's? I would think you'd want to keep the title in the two-part format so that viewers are more apt to tune in for the conclusion. I think that makes sense.

Whatever, I'm rambling because there wasn't much else to talk about in this episode. It was just so-so regarding the way they wrapped up the Crystal and Buck storyline. Obviously Megan made it out alive following her abduction, but you knew that was going to be the case. There is one thing I did want to talk about though. Is it just me, or is this show using less and less math?

(S03E01) I wasn't all that excited about this episode. Last season ended on an uneventful note so there wasn't much to really look forward to. I mean, I love this show, don't get me wrong. If you ask me, it shouldn't be on Friday nights because it could easily hold it's own in another time slot. So yeah, I wasn't too excited. Well that changed, because five minutes into the episode what did we get? That's right, the triumphant return of Lou Diamond Phillips.

(S02E19) I don't recall (lately anyway) watching something that so vividly took on the topic of school shootings. I honestly found this episode far more compelling than that film from a couple years back, Elephant.

What struck me the most though was that fact that the story had to be dramatized, in the sense that it had to have a twist. The events that occurred were all placed in motion at the hands of one manipulator. As the show usually does well, I had my mind set on another person the whole time.