judd hirsch

(S04E05) "I dunno. I just like watching things explode." - Larry

For a show that most folks (I include myself now) often refer to as just another cop show, Numb3rs can sure as hell be confusing sometimes. It's almost as if the writers are trying to one-up each other by making every episode more intricate than the last one. It's a good thing I watched this early this morning though. Had I sat down and put it on last night, I don't think I could have kept up with all the twists and turns.

(S04E03) "Oh... well. Enter Fleinhardt." - Larry

That might very well have been the funniest thing to come out of Larry's mouth yet. I'm glad they brought his character back into the fold, although it'd be nice if he were utilized more and the whole "I live at a monastery" story was dropped. He's barely even talking with Megan we found out and let's be honest -- he isn't learning anything from those monks if he lets her slip away.

Anyway, despite the fact that this episode was like watching a scene from any of the three horrible Fast and the Furious films, I still liked it for a handful of reasons.

(S04E02) "Nothing like this at the monastery and you know how I love a good soak." - Larry

I'm one of the biggest critics of this show, so if I've got something positive to say, then you know things must be changing. That's the way it seems though. Everything I hoped for last year seems to be coming into play this season. Charlie's math is playing a much more prominent role. Home life with Alan and Amita is more than just dinner. And the biggest one of all? There's solid character development and it's actually happening at the beginning of the season.

(S04E01) "Because I hate owing you." - Colby

Yeah, yeah... I know. Here it is, the end of the the fall premiere week and I'm blogging about a show that only seven months ago I said I was done with. "It's bland" I decried, and it's lost the spark that originally drew me in. So what am I doing here? Well, despite the fact that I stopped writing about Numb3rs, I'm a sucker for pretty much anything on TV. (Case in point? I reviewed the entire first season of Dirt!) That's right. I put my pen down and I watched Don and Charlie's antics for the whole rest of the third season anyway. And you know what? I sort of got sucked back in. Last season's finale was right up there but I still bit my tongue when I considered throwing up a post. I knew I'd end up being negative despite the fact that I enjoyed it. So I here I am, starting from scratch, attempting once again to remember why I liked this show in the first place.

Veteran writer, producer, and director Stan Daniels worked on several shows over the years. He won three Emmy Awards as a writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and another three as a creator and producer on Taxi.

Daniels wrote for several other shows as well, including Phyllis (a spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show), The Associates, and The Bill Cosby Show. As a director he worked on many sitcoms, including Dear John, Flying Blind, Best of the West, Almost Perfect, High Society, Sparks, and The Good News. His last credit was as the writer and producer of the 1991 animated TV movie The Kid.

Daniels died of heart failure on April 6 in Los Angeles.

60 minutes of ridiculous mathematical equations.
22 episodes in a season.
9 characters that have become flatter than paper.
1 fed up blogger.

I can't take it anymore. Numb3rs has gone from one of my favorite shows (I wrote my very first TV Squad post about an episode), to one of the blandest things on TV. Apparently, those behind this once spectacular show are now content sticking with its standard procedural formula. This show has for more potential than that. I argued on numerous occasions, that if done right, then there's no reason why Numb3rs couldn't hold its ground on another night. I take it back. Numb3rs has become just another cop show.

(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.