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.

Monday Night TV - some brief thoughts

Chuck
Zachary Levi is totally OM NOM NOM, and they let us know in this episode that the white Nerd Herders shirt does cover more than meets the eye. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with why I loved this episode. Not at all. Neither does the wonderful man-love occurring between Chuck and Casey. Nope. I loved this episode because I can turn off my brain and have a great time and not think I'm watching something mindless because it's smarter than your average brainless show. Did that make any sense? Okay, so the Sarah character still bothers me, but I get her place as the idealized hot spy chick. I don't watch for her. But if you were to mention any other character besides Sarah, I would say, "Yes, I watch it to see...(Chuck, Casey!<3!, Ellie, Awesome, Lester, Jeff, and even Morgan - who sometimes bugs me)." This was the premier I have been waiting for, and I was pleased.

Heroes
This episode bothered me less, or possibly I am being sucked into the hive mind that has kept it on the air for a third season. I don't know. What pisses me off about this show is that it could be so fucking good. It could be brilliant, even, but instead it is an uneven, sometimes boring, mess that tinkers with character arcs too much for us to even continue to care about them. A few thoughts:

Sylar's two minute turn as a conflicted good guy? Made me angry because that was the best Sylar I'd seen so far. This is what they should have done with his character all along. Because for that two minutes? He was totally badass. Badass. He could have been the Batman of the series.

Hiro's storyline bores me to tears. Literally, I almost started crying I was missing so much the Hiro of season 1.

Parkman's story is the only one holding my interest for any length of time because Parkman is the only character I care about anymore.

HRG can just keep on doin' what he's doin' I love his consistency and awesomeness.

Everybody else: STOP WHINING SO MUCH. YOU HAVE SUPERPOWERS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

So...Heroes...

Can I say I hated it? No, I shouldn't. I didn't hate it. I was unimpressed. I was kind of bored. I think the character arcs are (deliberately?) predictable. Gee, is Nathan going to be tested...AGAIN? Oh looky...

Okay, you know what? I'm not gonna do it. Because right now, mine is one of millions of blogs spouting their opinions, defenses, eviscerations, and the like, of last night's episodes. And I hate being sheep. But last night, the Husband's BFF brought over Deuce the Wonder Puppy (no longer a puppy), and instead of being annoyed by all the attention she wanted, I was grateful to have a distraction from the blandness occurring onscreen.

I made a promise to the Husband that I would commit to this season (totally walked away last season before everyone else started complaining - I watch too much TV, something has to be completely fascinating to me to keep me watching), and commit I will. Most likely with several bitchy comments.

I actually had problems with Heroes from the beginning, but I liked the concept. And that's where the problems start. The idea of "concept shows" leave me a little cold. The "we're trapped on a island and weird things are happening and we can't get off and OMG and Holy Shit! is the island moving?!?" Yes, I am unafraid to be the lone geek on the planet who hates Lost.

Here's the thing with me and TV: I love it, but I don't need to be challenged by it. We live in a big complicated messy world populated by citizens who are contradictory in their equal parts frustrating and lovable ways. I live in a world that acknowledges the gray aspects of humanity daily. So I don't celebrate it on TV as some do. I know there are those who love that. Who love the open-endedness of complicated story arcs, and the way good guys aren't always heroes or heroes aren't always good guys. And I can see the appeal. These are intelligent shows that cater to adults and reflect life in subtle ways even if they take place on an imaginary island that travels through or exists outside of time.

Me? I like completeness. I like turning on a television show and knowing the main story to which I am introduced will be resolved. I like having heroes on my TV that are unrealistically good, because I don't think it's too unrealistic. For example, Eureka is about as fantasy as TV gets, but Jack Carter's Everyman is a lone True Good Guy in a sea of geniuses (genii? genium?) who have relied too much on their intellect to swim through life. Jack, who cannot think his way out of every situation, has to therefore be the one unafraid to take action. And he does so, even with reservation, because it is the right thing to do. I love Jack Carter because he represents to me why I watch TV: not to see characters acting hyper-realistic in a fantastic setting, but people acting heroically, no matter the setting.

I started watching Heroes because I wanted to see a group of people struggle and come to terms with their gifts. And I knew some of those people would be "bad guys." So for every Sylar, shouldn't there be someone- Anyone?- who is willing to be the hero? Evil characters are more interesting if they actually have a foil. Oh sure, we have Hiro ("Hiro from Heroes is the only true hero."), but he isn't Sylar's equal, and right now he's annoying the piss out of me for not realizing that events we witness in a hypothetical future aren't certain to occur because simply becoming aware of those hypothetical future events automatically changes them. Someone who teleports through time and space should know that by now. So Sylar? boring and whiny to me. Peter? So needs to pull that stick out of his ass (did the season one finale never happen?). Nathan? Okay, you can keep doing what you're doing (because you do it so well), but DO SOMETHING, for fuck's sake. Actually that last bit? Goes for all of you.

ETA 3 things: 1. Parkman thinking the turtle was talking to him? Priceless. 2. Why always the city blowing up (or whatever)? 3. Sorry I did the thing I said I wasn't going to do in para 2.

To make up for the whining, I include my pic of the day:

Deuce the Wonder Puppy (no longer a puppy)