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Numb3rs, "Dirty Bomb"
So now that I've slept and eaten and stuff, I finally got to watch last night's Numb3rs episode (on my television! through the miracle of analog recording technology, i.e. my eight-year-old VCR that I bought my sophomore year of high school so I could tape the X-Files). I have no coherent thoughts (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merryish does, here, being all articulately squeeful about Charlie and Don and brotherhood) but my incoherent spoilerish squee is
Charlie! Teasing Larry! Charlie and I make almost the same search-in-progress noise. I love Charlie. And he always does this to Larry, and it never stops being funny to Charlie! I love that, Charlie's "Because it's getting so easy--" trailing off as Don rushes in, and I love that once Don explains, Charlie's first question is whether Don was exposed. Because there might be a massive radiological disaster in the offing, but Don comes first in Charlie's mind.
I also love the way the later scenes with Charlie and Larry working together highlight the position working with Don has put Charlie into--when Don says they need one location, now, Charlie's the one telling Larry to stop worrying about checking algorithms because they need to pick one. When Larry violates security because it's not fair, Charlie "I don't believe in guns" Eppes is the one who's forced to defend agency secrecy practices (though, um, not very vigorously or successfully, because it's Larry and his dad and, well, it's really not fair - but he tries). He's getting to be in that Blair Sandberg (fanonical? I assume?) middle space where the law enforcement people think he's a little ivory tower genius, and his fellow ivory tower geniuses think he's a sellout to the Man.
I love how Charlie continues to struggle with the zero margin for error--he can't just decide after the fact that a line of reasoning was flawed, can't scrub the board clean and start over--no pause to search the board here, no teasing: there are lives, Don's life, on the line now. Peer review can go hang.
It actually makes me wonder--as Charlie must--what would've happened in, say, this episode, if Charlie hadn't been there, or had guessed wrong. Well, a bunch of people would've been hurt or killed by conventional explosives going off in the middle of a busy square, but the actual crime, the theft, would almost certainly have failed. Without Charlie--and Alan's--input, the FBI really didn't have enough to go on to clear that square, and the baddies were relying on the evacuation to pull the job. So. Huh.
Also, seriously, a week to triangulate the location of a radiation leak? A week? Are they doing the math in their own blood?
Also, because this is getting much too thinky: Don is really awfully pretty. With the rolled-up sleeves and the spiky hair and mmmmmmmmm.
And! Bringing Charlie into the same room with the suspects to fake them out with math, and Charlie being all nervous but brave about it! And Don smacking people when they talked back, and Charlie, wide-eyed, retreating into the corner when they started getting out of hand--my God the talking-to Don must have given him about What To Do If One Of Them Comes At You. (Presumably: cover your head and hold still so I can shoot him.)
Plus, Don all spitting out the terminology he picked up from Larry and Charlie when he's talking the last perp out of the truck--"You're in the walking ghost phase now--" because he kicks ass at his job, and I'll bet you he remembers everything Charlie tells him, even the parts he doesn't really understand, because it might be important later and because in any other family? Don would be the smart one. And the pretty one.
merryish does, here, being all articulately squeeful about Charlie and Don and brotherhood) but my incoherent spoilerish squee is Charlie! Teasing Larry! Charlie and I make almost the same search-in-progress noise. I love Charlie. And he always does this to Larry, and it never stops being funny to Charlie! I love that, Charlie's "Because it's getting so easy--" trailing off as Don rushes in, and I love that once Don explains, Charlie's first question is whether Don was exposed. Because there might be a massive radiological disaster in the offing, but Don comes first in Charlie's mind.
I also love the way the later scenes with Charlie and Larry working together highlight the position working with Don has put Charlie into--when Don says they need one location, now, Charlie's the one telling Larry to stop worrying about checking algorithms because they need to pick one. When Larry violates security because it's not fair, Charlie "I don't believe in guns" Eppes is the one who's forced to defend agency secrecy practices (though, um, not very vigorously or successfully, because it's Larry and his dad and, well, it's really not fair - but he tries). He's getting to be in that Blair Sandberg (fanonical? I assume?) middle space where the law enforcement people think he's a little ivory tower genius, and his fellow ivory tower geniuses think he's a sellout to the Man.
I love how Charlie continues to struggle with the zero margin for error--he can't just decide after the fact that a line of reasoning was flawed, can't scrub the board clean and start over--no pause to search the board here, no teasing: there are lives, Don's life, on the line now. Peer review can go hang.
It actually makes me wonder--as Charlie must--what would've happened in, say, this episode, if Charlie hadn't been there, or had guessed wrong. Well, a bunch of people would've been hurt or killed by conventional explosives going off in the middle of a busy square, but the actual crime, the theft, would almost certainly have failed. Without Charlie--and Alan's--input, the FBI really didn't have enough to go on to clear that square, and the baddies were relying on the evacuation to pull the job. So. Huh.
Also, seriously, a week to triangulate the location of a radiation leak? A week? Are they doing the math in their own blood?
Also, because this is getting much too thinky: Don is really awfully pretty. With the rolled-up sleeves and the spiky hair and mmmmmmmmm.
And! Bringing Charlie into the same room with the suspects to fake them out with math, and Charlie being all nervous but brave about it! And Don smacking people when they talked back, and Charlie, wide-eyed, retreating into the corner when they started getting out of hand--my God the talking-to Don must have given him about What To Do If One Of Them Comes At You. (Presumably: cover your head and hold still so I can shoot him.)
Plus, Don all spitting out the terminology he picked up from Larry and Charlie when he's talking the last perp out of the truck--"You're in the walking ghost phase now--" because he kicks ass at his job, and I'll bet you he remembers everything Charlie tells him, even the parts he doesn't really understand, because it might be important later and because in any other family? Don would be the smart one. And the pretty one.