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Apr. 12th, 2012 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI've pushed into season 6, the final season, in my NUMB3RS rewatch. I'd been dreading the Amita gets kidnapped episode, which I hadn't watched since it first aired, but it turns out that it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Yes, it's got a lot of all-about-Charlie-ness, but a)she basically rescues herself, by luring one of the bad guys into a trap so that the FBI knows where to find her and b)it comes six or eight episodes after the Don gets stabbed episode, and the show understood it had to relate the two together, so that this wasn't about a woman getting kidnapped and her man feeling pain, it was about a family hurting together and coping together.
In general, NUMB3RS is about as math- and science-faily as I remember. They get NOTHING right when it comes to showing how math is really used to solve crimes. But they get the feel of using math and science right. They understand that it's not a magic bullet, that statistical analyses only give probable answers, that reconstructions and simulations take time and effort, that sometimes math is really hard. But they work so hard to generate a sense of wonder and excitement about the power of math.
My only real complaint is the 'Charlie's potential' narrative arc, which falsely juxtaposes the hypothetical groundbreaking theoretical results he would derive if he gave up distractions with his small-scale achievements stopping criminals individually with the FBI. Like, I understand how Larry has bought into the narrative, because he is invested as Charlie's former teacher in seeing Charlie succeed under the parameters that Larry helped define, and I can understand how Amita buys into it partially even though she's really too smart for that, because it's such a common delusion in the math community and she's still young and figuring things out. But it frustrates me when Alan or Don contemplate the false choice. The idea that his work in theory is more important than his work in applied crime analysis is built on so many dubious counterfactuals. (This is why the second Colin Hanks guest appearance, on "Frenemies", is so satisfying. It's basically the only time the show has a mathematician tell Charlie that what he's doing is worthwhile mathematically.)
Also, I love the Don explores his Judaism arc so, so much. It's only marred by one botch, when Don butchers the word 'halacha', and that's a shockingly good record for a show treating seriously with Jewish theology. If I've been forgetting in the past, I'm definitely adding NUMB3RS to my Purimgifts request list next year.
In general, NUMB3RS is about as math- and science-faily as I remember. They get NOTHING right when it comes to showing how math is really used to solve crimes. But they get the feel of using math and science right. They understand that it's not a magic bullet, that statistical analyses only give probable answers, that reconstructions and simulations take time and effort, that sometimes math is really hard. But they work so hard to generate a sense of wonder and excitement about the power of math.
My only real complaint is the 'Charlie's potential' narrative arc, which falsely juxtaposes the hypothetical groundbreaking theoretical results he would derive if he gave up distractions with his small-scale achievements stopping criminals individually with the FBI. Like, I understand how Larry has bought into the narrative, because he is invested as Charlie's former teacher in seeing Charlie succeed under the parameters that Larry helped define, and I can understand how Amita buys into it partially even though she's really too smart for that, because it's such a common delusion in the math community and she's still young and figuring things out. But it frustrates me when Alan or Don contemplate the false choice. The idea that his work in theory is more important than his work in applied crime analysis is built on so many dubious counterfactuals. (This is why the second Colin Hanks guest appearance, on "Frenemies", is so satisfying. It's basically the only time the show has a mathematician tell Charlie that what he's doing is worthwhile mathematically.)
Also, I love the Don explores his Judaism arc so, so much. It's only marred by one botch, when Don butchers the word 'halacha', and that's a shockingly good record for a show treating seriously with Jewish theology. If I've been forgetting in the past, I'm definitely adding NUMB3RS to my Purimgifts request list next year.