Do yourself a favor and just laugh, okay?

Sent to me by the ever-incomparable Maria:

For the love of NUMB3RS

I will, on the outset, admit a certain fondness for Rob Morrow since his Northern Exposure days. There's just something about a man whose eyes sparkle and crinkle up when he smiles.

Also, a weakness for math. Math is the purest, most distilled form of every science in existence. There is something beautiful about attempting to use equations to explain the universe. As if, even through math, we can try to touch the hand of God.

I actually didn't get into this show for two seasons, mostly because I thought it was just about this FBI stuff. Math is sexy and all, but I watch too many procedural shows. I am full up on crime and punishment. But once we moved to Austin and my Friday nights became sad and lonely, it was what was on. And I was instantly hooked. Because it's not just an FBI show. It is a show that examines the relationship between two brothers who care about each other, but are vastly different.

And it's even more than that. Because each brother-- genius, Charlie, and FBI supercop, Don-- have life issues of their own to deal with.

Charlie has had his life mapped out since he was a child at Princeton working equations that make the rest of us scratch our heads. He is a professor at a University, a noted mathematician, and respected scholar. But he feels his life is missing something. He worries his gifts shorted his brother on parental involvement. He wants more, but doesn't always know what that is, but he loves helping his brother solve crimes. Using math. Because Game Theory explains everything.

Don, once a baseball pitcher, loves his job as the team leader for the FBI's Violent Crimes Division. He worries about his team, worries about doing a good enough job, worries about his brother's involvement in his world. A brilliant arc from last season had Don in therapy, examining his overburdened sense of responsibility and how that impacts his personal life and professional choices. Don, who does feel he was slighted a bit, also recognizes his brother is meant for greatness, and fears he's now holding him back, even while recognizing how much Charlie is needed. Don is driven, ambitious, direct, and hardcore when it comes to his job. But he has been missing something and doesn't quite know what it is.

It is this show's unrepentant examination of these two grown men's interior lives that make me love it. Charlie and Don are adults living in an adult world. Sometimes the work they do affects them, but for the most part they accept those emotional scars a part of the Life, and don't become worn down or pathetically despondant in the face of it. They both have positive relationships to lean on, a supportive father (the incomparable Judd Hirsch), girlfriends who are professional and emotional equals. But they are also thinking, feeling men who represent the angst I believe a lot of us feel in our over-connected, yet strangely cut-off, 21st Century world. Their search is what keeps me coming back.

Also of note is an impressive supporting cast, which includes (for smarty-pants comic relief) Peter MacNicol as Charlie's mentor/best friend, the aforementioned Hirsch, Alimi Ballard as one of the few non-token black characters on TV. In fact, Numb3rs succeeds where so many shows do not in having an impressive array of nationalities and skin tones represented across gender lines without once feeling like it is catering to stereotypical tokenism (Bones still being the show that tops this list). And anyone who watches and doesn't develop a tiny girl-crush on Navi Rawat as Charlie's computer programming genius girlfriend, Amita, needs a check-up.

This season is shaping up to be an interesting one on the personal development front. Don is exploring the role his Jewish faith may play in his search for higher meaning in his life. Charlie is deepening his relationship with Amita and establishing his ethics as they apply to him in both his scientific and law-enforcement spheres.

These personal developments excite me because I feel I am watching a show in which adults act, think, and worry as adults do. In this day and age of arrested development all over our entertainment media, it is refreshing to see.

Now that Blogger is working again

Stephenie Meyer proves to all of us just how batshit insane she truly is.

Ironman? Didn't that movie come out way after the last book was written?
Oh, and do I need to even go into my Bella is no Jane Eyre rant again? I thought not.

Oh, what the hell, in case you have a memory like mine:

Which fictional character would you compare Bella to?
I think that Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet are more apt comparisons, in terms of the niche Bella fits into—despite the vampires, she is really a romance character.

I know she's talking niches here, and not character-to-character comparisons, but this just set my mind in a tither. I can honestly see the Jane Eyre, as that novel is a spin on the Beauty and the Beast motif of Gothic literature. And many arguments can be made about Rochester's treatment of Jane being similar to Edward's treatment of Bella. However, let's not forget Jane herself resented Rochester's treatment and went on a quest to seek her identity. She was then able to meet Rochester again as his equal, not by giving anything up, but by gaining her own independence. Bella may wish to be Edward's equal, but it will not be through gaining her independence that this will be attained.

Stephenie, as opposed to the person interviewed here, sees a lot of Edward Rochester in Edward Cullen.

...

Um, no. Rochester is a highly flawed character for a reason. He needs to be redeemed. Edward Cullen is a two-dimensional OMGPerfectBoyfriend! stalker who loveloveloves Bella sooooo much, he watches her sleep. Edward doesn't seek redemption, but suicide, and even then fails mightily because he chooses the most melodramatic way to do it possible. Rochester, like all failed romantic heroes, mopes around his house and snaps at people.

On to some of her other choices, which I will simply list for their comic value:
1. Linkin Park - a band that cannot even spell
2. Anne of Green Gables series - because a series-long exploration of one girl-to-woman's life can compare to Bella's just after high school marriage and devirgining.
3. Somewhere in Time - I think it takes balls to admit this and will give her kudos for it.

All right. There should be more, but most of my energy is going into writing right now. The mocking can commence in the comments.