Numb3rs: Noisy Edge (Episode 112)

To begin, this week's episode is all about two things: the desire for glory, and secrecy. In honour of that, I will be seeking my own glory through revealing my fellow recapper Nadia someone else's secret. Don't worry, it's not like it's a Big Damn Conspiracy (BDC for short) or anything. This episode provides the perfect ammunition – Ethan Embry for whom she has already declared her love.

Let us try to distract <strike>Nadia</strike> our target: look! It's Ethan Embry!

Whenever I say this, I will then provide you some top secret recapper information about our special projects coming up this summer. Remember it's top secret, so don't tell Nadia I'm your source for information.

What is it Nadia? Nothing happened. Just read on.

Opening Grid: 6950 small planes in LA, 400 Homeland Security threats, 5 L.A. radar arrays, 1 Aerial anomaly (spelled correctly).

The opening shot of some handheld aerial footage switches to Charlie and Don at the International House of Fedcakes. Charlie's going over some case files and finds that none of them will benefit from a mathematical application. What a quaint notion, the idea the fedcakes can solve a crime without math. On the other hand, he figures that, according to Chaos Theory there might be a space for math that he can't see yet.

"That's what I love about you," Don replies. What? His hair, his eyes, his voice, his geeky yet sexy manner? Oh wait, that's me. Don loves that Charlie never gives up. Oh please Don, who doesn't like a guy with stamina? Well, okay, maybe that's not how he meant it, but that is totally the way I plan on taking it.

Charlie takes it to mean the math, and we get a whole pile of Charlie's own self-doubt with, "If there's any limitation, it's got to be in the mathematician, not the math."

David rushes in with information about seven reported sightings of a UFO. It’s not appearing on military or civilian radar, so the army’s gone apeshit and sent up two F-16s for a look around. While the army, Don, and David are all concerned that it’s some type of small craft terrorist attack, I’m left wondering why Don’s team was called in the first place. I mean, doesn’t the FBI already have a division to deal with UFO’s and the like? I think it has a head agent by the name of Mulder.

Charlie tries to plot a flight path while Don heads up to the roof to try and get a glimpse of the UFO, where he is joined by a member of the army / navy / marines / postmen. I don’t know uniforms.

While the pair on the roof are in contact with Charlie, who has now plotted the route over Glendale and then northern downtown, an innocent family having a barbeque captures images of the UFO which are sure to become famous and a poor man stuck working late in his office gets a good look as well. Also, the two F-16s, called Rogue 1 and Rogue 2, which totally tickles my inner Star Wars geek, can’t find it. It’s disappeared.

Credits: The credits, considering the UFO aspect of this episode, should end like this:

At the BBQ: Don and David are questioning random BBQ dude about the UFO. The response to the question of what it looked like easily summed up with “like a UFO.” Fortunately, he has video. Unfortunately, it looks to be something sinister and not just some idiot who can’t file a flight plan.

IHOF: Don and David are watching a video of a much higher quality than anything ever shown on those “Aliens Revealed!” specials on Fox.

Erica Weston of the National Transportation Safety Board arrives. Apparently the NTSB’s biggest concern is UAE’s after 9/11, but this event looks to be a MPH. Confused? So are David and Don, and Weston practically giggles that it’s hazard of the job, using acronyms. Well sweetie, if you’re the person who the NTSB assigns to work with other agencies, then maybe you should avoid the acronym pitfall. Something about the character just sets me on edge to start – or maybe it’s the actress. I’ve never been a fan of Gloria Reuben. In this case a UAE is not a small country in the Middle East, but is an Unexplained Aerial Event, and an MPH is a multi-person hoax.

Don isn’t so sure, and figures Charlie can be useful in this situation.

St Andrews: Alan and Charlie are off for some father-son bonding at the golf-course, if Charlie can even tee-off, that is. He can’t hit the ball. Wearing his non-golf appropriate whiny jeans, he starts complaining that while he’s “the king” at basketball (although the DVD commentary for “Sniper Zero” debates that point), can snowboard, play video games and is learning to rock-climb, the golf gene eludes him.

“Charlie, do you always have to excel at what you do?” Alan asks after Charlie hits the ball off into the rough / the water / a passing car.

“Alan, have you met your son?” I ask in return.

Complaining that he’s done the math, and the current lack of skill does not compute, Charlie watches as Alan takes over, showing him how it’s done. While this is supposed to be all father-son touch-feely moment, secretly, Alan must be gloating inside.

After Alan takes a sweet shot, Charlie’s cell phone rings – yet another non-golf course appropriate item – and Don gives him an excellent excuse to get Charlie out of humiliating himself on the golf course. We get two interesting aspects of Charlie’s personality in this scene: 1) His frustration when math doesn’t give him an edge – edge being the ability to kick everyone else’s ass. 2) He’s not entirely sure rules apply to him.

Cal Sci: Don is already there with Amita and Weston, looking over radar data. Apparently the NTSB agent has time to try what is known in the business as “fruitless make-work projects,” as it was already established by David that the UFO (I refuse to call it a UAE) didn’t appear on radar. Lucky for her, Charlie knows everything there is to know about math, so he immediately comes up with a way of eliminating all the standard radar noise to find the object for which they are looking. The theory is called “Squish-Squash.” While this theory has a way of removing all the background noise to locate a single weak signal in radar, this is not the most important aspect of this theory. What is the most important aspect then? It was invented by a Canadian working for the University of Alberta. Being the patriotic Canadian I am, it’s cool that Numb3rs used a Canadian theory, even if it is from Alberta. That province still has a lot to make up for sending Stephen Harper back to Ontario.

The problem with the Squish-Squash Theory is that the algorithms take a while to compute, a problem for a potentially serious terrorism threat, but this time it’s Amita who solves the problem. Larry has time booked in the computer lab.

Computer Lab: Larry is frustrated that Charlie and Amita are not using Cal Sci’s Hal for more academic purposes. Not only is he frustrated by the UFO hunt, but it’s his professorial budget paying for it. Only after Charlie promises the Feds will reimburse him does Larry grudgingly agree “I suppose nation security has to take priority.” Larry must’ve borrowed Charlie’s whiny jeans. (Please don’t dig any deeper into that comment.)

Larry goes on to muse that the assumption that the UFO is a distinctly human creation might not be accurate. As he prattles on about dimensions and extra-terrestrial life, Charlie and Amita share WTF expressions. As we learned in the second season with “Mind Games,” Numb3rs isn’t The X-files no matter how cool it would be to have Mulder and Scully come out of retirement. Not only are psychic powers highly unlikely, a UFO’s even more so and, as if to prove that point, the Squish-Squash algorithm comes up with a projected flight path.

IHOF: Charlie shows the Feds and Westin the projected flight path of the UFO. While the signal eventually became too weak to track, the path leads right into the Staples Center. With this piece of information, Westin practically injures herself leaping to conclusions and says the terrorists (not that she knows there are any) are going to hit a major sporting event. I hope by major sporting event she means the L.A. Lakers, because the L.A. Kings sure as hell won’t be doing anything major any time soon.

Later, Don’s gathered a variety of Feds together to explain the dangers of a small aircraft that can escape detection. Apparently, Don got this team from the “special” pool of “special” agents, because they need this explained to them. Westin steps in and explains that they’re looking for what she calls the area of origin, then goes to the map and circles what looks to be the entire north end of the greater Los Angeles area. She needed Charlie’s help to figure that out? What does she do at the NTSB?

We now get a completely pointless -coloured montage of the various agents talking to various people at various airfields. All this tells us is…

Computer Lab: … The UFO didn’t come from any airfield the FBI checked out, which is completely frustrating Charlie. Larry responds, “Here’s where I get reductive on your ass.” (Like Larry would get any adjective or subjective completion on anybody’s ass.) He’s chastising Charlie for assuming that the object is an aircraft, and says that instead of focusing on a flight plan, they need to focus on the object itself.

Charlie figures out that using all seven radar sources, they could build a picture of the object. Apparently, Charlie didn’t read the opening grid, as there’s only supposed to be five radar arrays in L.A.!

The image comes together quickly and Amita and Larry, much to Charlie’s chagrin, are both convinced that it looks like an object from another world.

IHOF: David jokes that the object looks like a UFO, which sets off Charlie’s inner I-hate-the-paranormal sense that will be later honed in “Mind Games.” As no one has ever seen a real UFO, except for Mulder and Scully and those kids from Roswell, they can never be sure what one looks like, he insists.

Westin doesn’t irritate me in this scene as she gives some exposition that the design of aircraft is called the “blended wing design,” and has been around for decades. This leads Charlie to conclude that perhaps a runway isn’t necessary at all, and perhaps they need to look into vertical take-off.

“Like one of those Harrier Jets,” Don adds. Oh, smart Don, who will, hopefully, reappear in season 3.

Westin also adds that the reason the aircraft stayed off radar in the first place was due to the building materials. Essentially, the aircraft could be anywhere, designed by anyone.

Don figures that it must be a small community of people who work on this type of aircraft. Never assume, Don, because my design not only includes blended wings, but also a cloaking device. Of course, I’ll get around to building it once I finish my engineering degree. To get one of those, I guess I’d probably have to take high school math, right? Well, it might be a while. I’ll probably keep it in my garage.

Westin totally disregards that I might be planning on building my own UFO, and suggest that the team start looking at Nordel Aeronautics, which has offered a $5,000,000 prize for the type of aircraft for which they are looking? Only $5,000,000? That’s *so* not worth my time to build one then.

Nordel Offices: That $5,000,000 prize has never been won because no one has yet to come up with a design. David and Westin ask if the Nordel executive knows anyone who could have designed a personal aircraft with vertical take-off, and the executive provides them with two names – David Croft and Lane Gosnell, who used to be partners until design arguments got in the way.

Hanger: Westin and David have gone to talk to Croft, who is royally pissed that Gosnell got their plane design up in the air. The real reason for the dissolution of the partnership was nothing to do with the design, but rather over the fact Gosnell wanted to make it into the history books. Croft never actually says what his side was, which leads us to believe that he was just in it for the cash. It doesn’t sound quite as noble.

While Croft doesn’t know where Gosnell is, he sure hopes the Feds find him so that his lawyers can pay him a visit.

IHOF: To make sure we all clearly understand that Lane Gosnell is a bad guy, Don exposits that Gosnell once gave a speech saying the 9/11 hijackers were aviation pioneers, as they proved that an idiot with religious fervor and a martyr complex a minimal amount of training can fly an aircraft. Gosnell’s also flown into restricted airspace, and been locked up for a psychiatric evaluation. In other words, the man’s bat-shit crazy.

St. Andrew’s: Charlie is searching for a lost golf ball, while Alan is trying to convince him to give it up and drop another. Using his math skills, Charlie’s annoyed the ball isn’t where he calculated it should be, as even golf balls have to follow the laws of physics. (Although golf balls, socks, and homework will always break the rules of physics by never being where they’re supposed to be.) Alan is worried that the foursome behind them might start using their heads for golf balls if his son doesn’t hurry up. Charlie then applies Chaos Theory and looks a few feet away from where he was looking, then proudly holds up a ball – which Alan informs him isn’t his. Calling back to the annoyed foursome, that they did, in fact, find Charlie’s ball, he ushers his son back onto the golf course.

Gosnell Residence: Look! It’s Ethan Embry!

Quick, while Nadia is distracted, click here for some top secret information.

What? Nothing happened? Just read on.

The Gosnells live in a run-down shack and grow their own food – but the vegetable garden needs some serious weeding. All of their money must’ve gone into the plane. Not having seen his father in a few days, Blake Gosnell is surprised that the Feds have a picture of the top-secret aircraft, and is even more surprised to learn it had been flown over Los Angeles.

Another sign of the Gosnells’ poverty is the rust bucket of a truck sitting in front of the father’s workshop, to where Blake has so obligingly taken Don and David. First calling out for his father and getting no answer, Blake enters the code on a security system that must’ve been what the Gosnells traded groceries for. The trio is shocked to find the workshop empty and the plane missing.

Blake runs out behind the building to find the grass and soil disturbed, proving that the plane had been flown, leaving the question…

Look! It’s Ethan Embry!

He’s in on it too. Here’s proof.

Where is Gosnell now?

Alter in the workshop, Blake is trying to defend his father’s anti-war activism. Don is being all harsh and authoritarian with him, and all I can think is that Don will discover exactly what it’s like to be in Blake’s shoes about a year later in "Protest". Don asserts that Blake can’t possibly know if his father’s intentions are nefarious.

We are provided with the information that Blake and his father were still testing the rudder and that Gosnell is too good of a pilot to crash. (Blake’s aftershave is called “Foreshadowing.”) What concerns Blake is that his father recently accepted backing from a German company, and that the company was far more concerned with the technology than history. He’s really not certain what his father will do.

All the while, David listens intently.

German Company: David is interviewing a German executive about his involvement with Gosnell. The company has already invested well over $1,000,000 in the plane, having figured that an investment in the technology would have a huge return. David drops the bombshell that Gosnell’s plane has already flown, and that some of the company’s overseas investors might be pretty interested in the technology. The German Suit is suitably intimidated, and confesses that he knew Gosnell was close, to which David surmises that the foreign investors, might have done more than just be interested. Even though this scene is an awesome “look at David in action” scene, it should be noted that the German Suit is wearing an aftershave entitled “Red Herring.”

Cal Sci: Charlie is congratulating Amita for solving a difficult problem, to which Amita replies, “I spent six months getting nowhere, until I thought, if you can’t come through the front door, climb through a window.” This is a sentiment good for coffee mugs and teenagers past their curfew.

The conversation turns into a bunch of subtext about Amita enjoying Cal Sci, getting a second doctorate in astrophysics, and no longer being Charlie’s student. To sum it up, the actual conversation should’ve been this:

Amita: Once I’m no longer your student, we can so jump each other.

Charlie: *gulp*

Amita: I mean it, totally NC-17 baby.

Non-shipper: Shit.

Fortunately, before the conversation can turn into the awkwardness later termed as “Charlie and Amita’s first date,” Westin arrives to tell the pair about the Feds findings from the last few scenes. She goes on to explain that she has figured out a new way of tracking the plane using both weather and traditional radar. They’ve just got to tune the traditional radar not to look for metal, “Because that’s what most planes are made out of,” she says. While this isn’t the Numb3rs Painfully Awkward Line™ of this episode, it is the dumb-ass line of this episode. What did she think everyone thought planes were made out of? Lego? Jello? Lincoln Logs? Anyway, they’re going to recalibrate the radar to look for aircraft made of something other than metal.

This is followed by a 24 style montage of Amita, Charlie and Westin recalibrating the radar. Yes, it’s exactly as exciting as it sounds. Amita types, while Westin and Charlie just point at stuff and write on notepads. Riveting.

IHOF: David is filling Don in about the German Venture capital firm when Charlie and Westin rush in with the exciting news that the montage totally worked and they now know the plane should be within a quarter mile of Signal Hill. Everyone exits with a sense of importance and urgency, calling for search and rescue.

Signal Hill: The montage of agents looking is not as successful as the radar recalibration montage, and the plane is still nowhere to be found.

Charlie insists the math is right, and Westin gets the idea that “the plane might be hidden in plain sight.” (Get it, plane in plain sight? Hee? No?) Charlie gets one of his Charlie nightmares visions involving golf balls, and realizes that the best place to look would be somewhere an oddly-shaped object wouldn’t stick out. Don suggests a local junkyard – where a variety of oddly shaped objects might be. Who would notice an oddly shaped aircraft amongst all the junk, unless it was made out of Lego?

Junkyard: The search of the junkyard yields two findings: 1) the plane. 2) Lane Gosnell, dead. Dun dun dun!

Just one commercial break later, Westin has figured out the cause of the crash: sabotage. Someone tampered with the rudder controls. Cue the distraught relative, as Blake turns up asking about his father. He wants to know if he suffered. Don assures him that Gosnell died on impact, but, as the plane was brought down due to human intervention in the form of a screwed up rudder, he was murdered.

“The rudder,” Blake repeats dumbly. Wow, Blake put on his aftershave a bit too strongly this morning. I can smell the foreshadowing a whole year later.

IHOF: David and Don are confused as to why Gosnell was killed and by whom. None of the German Investment Capital Firm’s investors are in the country, but they can’t be sure that perhaps it was someone working on behalf of them.

Westin explains that, according to the flight recorder, it was definitely sabotage, as Gosnell clearly didn’t know about the tampering and it was his overcorrecting that caused the crash. The suspicion falls on Croft, who thought that Gosnell would try something “spectacular.” The logic doesn’t quite follow here, because I’m certain Croft didn’t think that the spectacular thing would be crashing to the ground amongst scrap metal.

Cal Sci: Charlie is marking tests for his “Non-linear Dynamics Class.” Of course, it would be that much more convincing if we’d actually seen him teaching said class. This has to be the obligatory reference to Charlie’s actual job, otherwise the office at Cal Sci would be hard to explain.

Don walks in looking for a distraction of sorts, because he can’t figure out the Gosnell case. He then asks Charlie if he has any ideas. Wow, that Foreshadowing aftershave must be pretty popular, because asking Charlie for a suggestion when he absolutely no data is something second season Don would do. Of course, subscribing a motive is Terry’s job, so why doesn’t he just ask her? Wait! She’s not even in this episode and, be honest, did you even notice before I mentioned it?

Charlie would need data, of course, so Don switches the subject and asks Charlie about Amita’s most recent announcement that she’s staying on at Cal Sci. Charlie admits that he’s happy, and most definitely not as her thesis advisor.

Don obviously forgot to take his Ritalin that morning and switches topics once again, to Charlie’s golf game. He was supposed to play with Alan that morning but Charlie, in sheer frustration, has given up on golf altogether.

Remembering that he’s in the first season, and, therefore, still remarkably bright, Don surmises the real reason Alan likes playing golf with his youngest son, because he’s better at something, finally because he finally gets to teach Charlie something.

David calls and tells Don that Croft’s fingerprints are all over Gosnell’s workshop. Don orders David to pick up Croft, and Don will meet them back at the office.

IHOF: In an interview, Croft denies doing anything to Gosnell, but admits he’s been angry at him for the past decade. “So that’s why you guys thought he’s planning something big,” is David’s response. Here we have it, the Numb3rs Painfully Awkward Line™. What does Croft being pissed have anything to do with planning Gosnell something big? Plus, who are the “you guys?” David, please, logic! It’s a good thing.

After being confronted with the evidence of his being in Gosnell’s workshop, Croft confesses that Blake accidentally spilled the beans a few months previously. All Croft wanted to do was see the plane and finally have Gosnell admit that he’d helped in the design. He defends himself by saying that he would never have touched the plane. Note he doesn’t say he wouldn’t harm Gosnell, but heaven help him if he hurt an inanimate object made of something that’s not metal or Cheez Whiz.

Cal Sci: Westin is explaining to Amita and Charlie how the rudder was damaged. Someone had altered the controls in three separate spots. Confused as to why someone would break something three times when once would suffice, Amita thus proves that she’s the one person other than Charlie who remembered to put on her logic hat in this episode.

Amita’s query causes Charlie to have a moment of realization, and he says that someone wasn’t trying to break it; they were trying to improve it.

IHOF: Charlie tells Don he knows who did it but didn’t, confusing both Don and me. With that, Charlie explains that the team was working on faulty logic, as the tampering to the rudder controls were meant to be enhancements, and the crash only proves that Gosnell didn’t know. With that, Don has a eureka moment of his own.

Gosnells’: Once again going to question Blake, David and Don have a pretty firm idea who is responsible for the crash. When Blake asks if they plan to share it with him, Don gets all, “dude, it was so you.” You see, Don remembered the smell of the Foreshadowing aftershave when Blake was all, “The rudder! The rudder!” and asking if his Dad suffered. The logical question would have been why the plane crashed in the first place.

Look! It’s Ethan Embry!

I will have more information for you during my recap for “Manhunt.” I can’t give away too much too soon or Nadia will be suspicious!

With Holmesian logic, Don goads Blake into confessing. Blake only tampered with the rudder to prove the point that he was worthy to work side by side with his father, who apparently didn’t think much of his son. Well, Blake, I’m sorry to break it to you, but the whole crash thing doesn’t add much support to your side of the argument. Blake is angry that his “father cares more for his own accomplishments than his own son.” He also wonders if his father once thought about him the night of the test run. Did the father think about whether or not he wanted to be there? Whether or not Blake wanted to be there? Whether or not Blake wanted to say, “I’m proud of you, dad,” or “I totally fucked up the rudder, sorry?”

St. Andrews: Don and Alan are all “Where’s Chuck?” Except it’s not in the sense that he’s lost, it’s in the sense of, we so got him by making him lug that big set of golf clubs around. Said golf clubs are not only older than Charlie, but also weigh more than two Charlies. Alan promises to buy him a better set when he improves. It’s an easy promise to keep, because Alan, and the entire viewing audience, know it’s never going to happen.

Trying to encourage his youngest, Alan suggests that maybe Charlie will finally par a hole, but Charlie comes back with the comment that just getting it in the hole is enough. Finally recognizing Charlie’s misery, Alan suggests that they might try something else for some time together. Like, for instance, the entire house war of the second season?

Charlie either remembers Don’s early words or wisdom about allowing Alan to teach him something, or he’s terrified Alan’s going to suggest Scrabble, and acquiesces that he’s learned to love golf.

Alan’s joy is heightened when Charlie admits that he’s a great teacher. Charlie nods to Don, and the brothers settle back to watch Alan tee off.

“Okay Alan, show us how it’s done!” Don cheers. Yes boys, he can.