Final Numbers

I, like so many thinking people, am not a fan of gross abuses of the English language. When texting or instant messaging, I will not type LOL, even if I am actually laughing out loud. There is a precision to language that I value. If used effectively, language can start wars, end wars, make friends, make enemies, and serve as a delightful way to pass the time. Last Saturday, I read two novels that were both over 300 pages long. You don’t do that if you are not a fan of words.

My fondness and admiration of language is why I couldn’t stand the television show “Numbers” before I’d even seen a single episode – because the title of the show was not “Numbers,” but “Numb3rs,” and that’s just stupid and wrong. There are, after all 26 perfectly serviceable letters in the English alphabet, and the addition of 3 as a letter just about put me off my lunch.

You can imagine how much more annoyed I became when I did watch the series and found it to be one of the best on television. My friends, also lovers of language, made fun of me. I would defend the show and talk about how smartly written it was and how clever each character was. But nearly every defense I made was rebuked by the 3 in the title.

And now, after six seasons (three of which were truncated, one by the show starting midseason, another by a writer’s strike, and the most current season by the dolts who run CBS cutting back on the number of ordered episodes), it looks like – no, not going to do it. You see, at this point, every TV critic is going to try to best each other with what he or she perceives to be a clever pun or play off of the show’s title. I was just about to conclude the first sentence of this paragraph with something like “it looks like their number is up,” or “the numbers are in, and they don’t look good,” but I steered away from the skid at the last moment. For the record, there is no such thing as a clever pun.

By all accounts, the series should not have worked as well as it did. Walk into a network executive’s office and try to convince him to greenlight a dramatic series centered on the world of advanced mathematics. Furthermore, cast TV’s beloved nudnik Dr. Joel Fleischman (a.k.a. Rob Morrow) in the role of the show’s action hero. Then top it off with a father figure played by the guy who played the vaguely racist Jewish stereotype in “Independence Day” (Judd Hirsch). Let me know how that works out for you.

It worked. And I know how defensive I sound, but it really worked. The series didn’t rely on tired old gimmicks like forcing a suspect’s confession in a dark interrogation room. And it didn’t rely on tired new gimmicks like DNA evidence. Instead, crimes were solved using math. And, as the narration in the first season’s title sequence used to remind viewers, “math is everywhere.” Math is at the heart of logic and deductive reasoning. Math is at the heart of the interplay between two or more people. Math is at the heart of predicting future behavior and explaining past behavior.

For the record, math does not have to be boring. And regular viewers of “Numbers,” or if you insist “Numb3rs,” know that math can be sexy. Put simply, Amita Ramanujan (played skillfully by Navi Rawat) is the most appealing female character in the history of television. She is smart and funny and compelling and she demands those around her be smart and funny and compelling, too.

Credit must be given to actor David Krumholtz, a relative unknown at the time of casting, for taking on the role of the smartest-guy-in-the-room. He could have made Charlie an antisocial geek (though the Larry Fleinhardt character, played by the always funny, always gentlemanly Peter MacNicol, seemed to fill that criteria). He could have made Charlie pompous. Instead, Charlie was humble, aware of his skills but also aware of his flaws.  Of course, credit must be given to the writers, but Krumholtz can defray emotion with a casual glance.

Bouncing Charlie’s book smart character off of Don’s street smart character would have been the easy way to go, but Rob Morrow wasn’t playing a dummy. His FBI agent may be more visceral than David Dochovney’s Fox Mulder character on “The X-Files,” but Don showed great insight in his search for the truth and in his willingness to accept it however it presented itself.

The series seemed to work best when it focused on character development. Charlie coming out of his reclusive shell in the early seasons. Don coming to terms with his faith in the later seasons. Larry’s never-ending quest to find answers “out there.” Crimes still get solved. Criminals still get put behind bars. But the in-between moments made the show more than a procedural cop drama.

I lament the loss of anything on television containing actual quality. I am hoping for a last minute reprieve for the series, though I’ve seen rumors online of a sitcom pilot being produced starring both Krumholtz and Morrow, so I cannot be optimistic. It might actually be fun to see the series reinvented as a collection of made-for-TV movies, akin to “Columbo” or even the recent series of movies based on the late Robert Parker’s Jesse Stone character. In any event, television audiences were given six seasons of a great show, but a lot of viewers missed out on it because they couldn’t get past the stupid title. I’m glad I could see beyond my own linguistic prejudices.

I’m still not going to text LOL, though.