“Numb3rs” on CBS

Quite frankly, it’s been a while since I real­ly fol­lowed any­thing on CBS. That’s why I was intrigued that Rob Mor­row was going to be on a new series, and fur­ther, that it would be about a math­e­mati­cian help­ing the FBI to solve cas­es. I’ve been col­lect­ing some of the shows on the TiVo for the past month, but I’ve been wait­ing until after I had a chance to watch the fourth episode, “Struc­tur­al Cor­rup­tion,” to post some thoughts about the show. Yes, that was a week ago, but keep in mind I have a day job with long hours.

NUMB3RS - Pilot Episode

NUMB3RS — Pilot Episode — Image cour­tesy of www.numb3rs.org

Ok, the 2 sec­ond sound­bite review of the show: “A Beau­ti­ful Mind” meets “CSI.” Now, onto the meat. Rob Mor­row is actu­al­ly quite believ­able in the role of FBI Spe­cial Agent Don Eppes. I don’t find myself think­ing of way­laid doc­tors in Alas­ka at all. The oth­er cast mem­bers are all well done as well. This isn’t NYPD Blue heavy, where things are so grit­ty you need a show­er after the cred­its role and it isn’t a sound­stage sit­com, either. It’s a nice dra­ma, with as much on the per­son­al sto­ries of the char­ac­ters as the cas­es them­selves. It seems no show is will­ing to fol­low the orig­i­nal Law & Order for­mat, where the cas­es are the stars and the reoc­cur­ring actors just help to sup­port the sto­ry. That’s okay, see­ing where the char­ac­ters live is not bad for the greater sto­ry that spans episodes, either. I do find the por­tray­al of the sci­en­tists as some­what trite, in that they’re all spacey and can’t remem­ber if they weren’t going in or out of the build­ing because they’re too deep in thought. I’ve know many bril­liant sci­en­tists and math­e­mati­cians, and they most­ly thought about beer and sex just like the rest of us. They nev­er had a hard time walk­ing and chew­ing gum at the same time, so to speak. I will say, that for all the parts, the show’s pro­duc­ers seemed to both­er to try and find peo­ple who could pull of the part rather than just look while blankly going on about sta­tis­tics, for­mu­las, and num­ber theory.

NUMB3RS - Pilot Episode

NUMB3RS — Rob Mor­row as FBI Spe­cial Agent Don Eps & Sab­ri­na Lloyd as F
BI Spe­cial Agent Ter­ry Lake. Image cour­tesy of www.numb3rs.org

The direc­tion of the show is in the style of Fox’s 24, with hand­held cam­er­a’s film­ing from some­times incon­ve­nient angles, such as from out­side vehi­cles and through door­frames, etc. It’s well done here, and the style isn’t tired yet. The spe­cial effects are nice. Giv­en the shows run­ning theme of math­e­mat­ics (and it’s many dis­ci­plines, such as physics and engi­neer­ing), it’s like watch­ing those nice lit­tle ani­ma­tions on a Dis­cov­ery show like Myth­busters.

This brings me to the fourth episode. First of all, the premise of the show (that is, a stu­dent dis­cov­er­ing a struc­tur­al prob­lem with a already built, high pro­file build­ing) is based on the sto­ry of the Citi­corp build­ing in Man­hat­tan. A year after the land­mark build­ing was opened, struc­tur­al engi­neer William LeMes­suerier received a phone call from a stu­dent who claimed the columns were not in opti­mum loca­tions to resist load­ing from wind. It’s the very first sto­ry, chap­ter one, of my col­lege engi­neer­ing ethics text­book. Any­way, the sto­ry ends with LeMes­suri­er real­iz­ing that even though the way the build­ing was con­struct­ed (which was­n’t exact­ly the way he’d spec­i­fied) would like­ly fail cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly in a 16-year wind, not a 50 or 100-year wind that the build­ing would have been designed for. LeMes­suri­er came up with reme­di­a­tion plans and Citi­corp imple­ment­ed them, sav­ing the build­ing, the church at the build­ings base, and any num­ber of peo­ple from harm or death. It’s con­sid­ered the sto­ry engi­neers tell their chil­dren to teach them how to respond to errors.

The Numb3rs episode deals with this, as well as col­lege stu­dents’ high risk of sui­cide, shady con­trac­tors, and even finds time to bring up some romance. As a struc­tur­al engi­neer, some of the tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions seemed a lit­tle child-like. How­ev­er, I’m sure that most of the stuff I can’t fol­low on ER my wife groks with­out thought. The fact that Char­lie (David Krumholtz) and his physi­cist men­tor, Lar­ry (Peter Mac­Ni­col), build a com­put­er mod­el of the build­ing to respond to seis­mic and wind forces in an after­noon is a lit­tle com­i­cal. I won’t go into it, but it’s not like­ly they would be able to do it in a month, let alone a few hours. They at least both­er to explain what’s going on. Any­way, Char­lie gets very wrapped in deter­min­ing what the young engi­neer­ing stu­dent was try­ing to dis­cov­er. The stu­dents death, judged to be a sui­cide, seems to deeply affect our hero. Odd­ly, it seems the engi­neer­ing stu­dent left noth­ing but lots of blue­prints of build­ings around and no notes or cal­cu­la­tions of any kind to indi­cate he may have been con­cerned about exces­sive deflec­tion under quar­ter­ing winds. Oh, well, some engi­neers do things in their heads, I sup­pose. With the help of the FBI strong-arm­ing some rot­ten con­trac­tors, the build­ing is soon to be saved with the help of our old friend: the tuned mass damp­en­er.

Numb3rs has a lot of promise as a series. It can cer­tain­ly have some inter­est­ing cas­es due to the fact that pret­ty much every­thing can be tied in to math. They do it already on cop, med­ical, and inves­ti­ga­tion dra­mas. No rea­son to think this could­n’t be just as suc­cess­ful. The show needs to try and find it’s own voice and feel ear­ly on, so as to not be any­thing more than “A Beau­ti­ful CSI — Los Ange­les.” For what it’s worth, it’s not got a sea­son pass on the TiVo. What show could ask for more?

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

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