Numb3rs: Harvest (Episode 214)

During my last recap, I renamed myself theoriginalgangster. For this recap, I will do one better; I will rename the episode. No longer will this episode be called “Harvest.” Instead, it will, henceforth, be called “Dirty Prita Things.” As the recapper here, I have that power! (All right, I don’t, but despite the serious topic, I spent the entire episode waiting for Chiwetel Ejiofor to show up on screen. Unfortunately, that would probably be over the quota of Serenity actors allowed on Numb3rs per season. )

Thinking of quotas, here’s this week’s quota of opening grid statistics: 90,582 Waiting list $75,000 Brokerage fee, 8,977 Miles from home, 2 Sisters.

Setting: Math Oscars. Commentators: Isaac Mizrahi & Joan Rivers

Joan: Here we are at the Math Oscars where this year’s feature colour is black.

Isaac: Yes Joan. Everything, the room is dark. Charlie’s suit is black. Amita’s dress is black.

Joan: Charlie’s tie isn’t black. It’s some strange reflective material and vaguely puce looking. Isn’t that the same suit we saw at the People’s Choice Awards?

Isaac: (Disinterested in anything Joan is saying) I’m going to go feel Amita up. That’s what I do on the red carpet. Except, the carpet is black.

Joan: While he does that, and Charlie presents the Milton Award to this year’s winner, I will continue to give completely unfunny and unwarranted judgment on those around me.

Isaac: Damn, I just missed her. Amita won the Milton Prize before I could grab her ass.

Joan: Should’ve moved faster you overgrown leprechaun. Of course, Amita was going to win, who else would it be?

Isaac: Neil Patrick Harris? Colin Hanks? Did you know her last name was Ramanujan?

Joan: I don’t think anyone’s ever said so before, but somehow we just know.

Isaac: Do you think her last name is an appropriate use of allusion?

Joan: Hush darling, Amita’s about to give her thank you speech for her award.

Isaac: Award, which here means “plot device that will be of importance later.”

Joan: Whatever Lemony Snicket. I’m trying to admire the fact the network is showing an intelligent, successful woman who is not being used strictly as eye candy.

Isaac: Don’t admire her too much. If your expression changes, your surgically crafted face may fall off.

Joan: *Bleeped by the censors.*

Baltic Hotel: (It’s not really the hotel’s name, but for this recap, it is. The inspiration came from somewhere...) Homeland security has made David and Don their bitches by making them run down some tip about a hotel basement. Don takes this seriously but David is acting like this is some interagency punking. Our feds are stopped by a doorman who is apologizing about their luggage. Careful doorman, don’t hurt yourself jumping to those oh so sweet sounding conclusions. Don corrects the doorman’s mistake and tells him about a report of suspicious activity in the hotel’s basement and the bellman is all “I don’t understand,” as if the request was made in ancient Sumerian or something. Bellman gets a clue (the clue? Don: "That means you show us the basement") and takes them down to Baltic’s basement.

Turns out the Baltic either has nothing to store in the basement or was frequently used for raves in the 90s. Either way, there’s nothing there of interest, other than some serious health code violations. Don’s 'I know that locked room is suspicious' sense goes off and the bellman is a little slow unlocking the door.

The way I figure it is that the actor was so busy trying to remember his lines, as he clearly didn’t really know a damn thing he was supposed to say in this scene or he’s the worst actor ever on this show. By the way, everything the bellman says is definitely the Numb3rs Painfully Awkward Line (TM) for the week. David believes differently and upon the discovery of some bloody linens, a car battery and ice on the floor, arrests the shocked bellman.

Don hears some noises coming from deeper into the Baltic’s basement, and finds a very scared girl hiding in the corner. David calls for an ambulance at the Hotel Barclay (you know you want to say Baltic David) and really I should be grateful he didn’t arrest her too.

Memo: Arrests

To: David Sinclair

From: theoriginalspy

Next time you arrest somebody, remember these two words: Probable Cause. It avoids inconveniences like lawsuits.

And you may ask yourself, what the hell happened to the credits? There are no credits? I’m suddenly forgetting what show I’m watching, or who is in it. I’m so confused.

International House of Fedcakes: The girl is clearly so traumatized that even Megan can’t even get her to speak her. Meanwhile, Colby is talking about the things he’s seen people do with a car battery while he was in the army. He’s not overly specific, but I’m sure someone in the army was stupid enough to take pictures. Not like there’s precedent for that or anything. During this scene the credits are aired over the action.

All this talk of car batteries and the army leads to the idea that torture must be involved, because clearly the feds didn’t see my new title for this episode, or they would’ve understood the truth earlier. Unfortunately, the feds know nothing about this girl, other than that she is a foreign national and they are left hoping some way of communicating with her comes along.

Charlie and Amita, who is wearing her “some way of communicating” shoes, arrive to tell everyone about her prestigious win earlier in the evening. They pass the girl who starts talking to Amita in a foreign language. Amita’s face runs the gamut of emotions from confused, to awkward and then to frightened in the span of the girl’s short sentence.

Charlie is distracted from the exciting events earlier in the evening by the crime scene photos of ice and he claims he can use his math prowess to help them figure out the timeline of the melting ice. We get our math analogy of the week, along the accompanying special effects. It’s deadly dull, but I think its purpose is just to let Amita process the strange occurrence in the hallway. After all, this isn’t a Hero!Charlie episode. This time, it’s all about Amita.

Amita finally chips in that the girl spoke to her, and that she recognizes the language as Tamil, implying the girl is from where same part of India as Amita’s family. Turns out her family emigrated from Chennai. I wonder why of all places the writers would pick that one. I wonder...

Megan, in a desperate attempt to make the girl talk, takes Amita in to try and communicate with her. Again, the girl speaks to her in Tamil and all Amita understands is that she’s asking for help and something about her sister. Amita manages to get a name, and the fact she speaks English out of the girl. Her name is Santi. And I curse the network gods for giving me a character who is so pitiful looking I can’t find anything humourous! It would be like kicking a puppy, or stealing candy from a baby, or stealing candy from a kicked puppy.

Baltic Hotel: David is interviewing the night manager about any suspicious activities and then lets him go. It’s a full 180 from the earlier random arrest of the bellman. I’m glad David got my memo but the night manager is creepy looking. Plus, the night manager has some sort of strange European accent. For some reason, a person who works for a hotel with an Eastern European accent must be bad in this specific situation. Again, I’m not too sure why I believe that, but I do.

In, what to me, is the funniest line in a distinctively comic relief free episode, is that Colby comes back announcing that the ice wasn’t provided by the Baltic. Why is that funny? Colby, has finally found his mission in life, ice cube inspector. Apparently, the cubes are the wrong shape to be the ones found in the basement. What does this mean? I guess the Baltic makes ice octagons.

The suspicious night manager, who I will now call Ivan, (a suddenly inspired name selection) explains that people are always in and out of the hotel. There are the bread deliveries, laundry service and paper deliveries for David and Colby to investigate. (“Excuse me sir, I think there’s something suspicious about the way your paper is folded.”)

Math Dining Room: In Charlie’s ever constant crusade to prove that he owns La Maison d'Eppes, Charlie and Larry are performing their experiment of melting ice in the dining room. The living room was full from “Double Down” and the garage has been taken over by “Convergence” and “The O.G.” By the season finale, Larry and Charlie will be making calculations in Alan’s walk-in closet.

Charlie and Larry have recreated all the variables to make the ice melt like it did in the Baltic’s basement. Alan arrives freezing his ass off, but before anything in what could have been a potentially comic relief filled scene (I’m needing one) he’s all right with the experiment as it’ll help solve a gruesome mystery. The experiment which is slightly above grass growing, but definitely below paint drying (it’s the fumes) in interest does yield the results that the crime took place at about 7:15am.

Baltic Hotel: Colby and David are interviewing the bakery delivery man, who makes a totally unnecessary crack about cops and doughnuts. The delivery man didn’t see anything suspicious except and ambulance (hey delivery guy, and ambulance at a hotel loading dock is suspicious, unless it explains the mystery meatloaf.). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern both echo “an ambulance” in such a way I want one of them to yell “Jinx,” but once again, the feds prove they are more mature than me.

IHOF: Megan and the tech guy (who I always confuse with Archie from CSI) are going through the 911 logs, again nothing. Nobody at the Baltic called an ambulance. Megan decides to check the emergency rooms.

Sacred Heart Hospital: (Oh I wish!) Megan talks to an ER doctor, who is clearly not Eliot, Turk or Dorothy JD about an East Asian Jane Doe with internal injuries. The girl Megan is searching for isn’t going anywhere as she’s in the morgue. She’s also missing a kidney.

IHOF: We’re now having the justification of using the organ theft urban legend, by Colby telling us all about “Transplant Tourists” in Afghanistan. Colby, you’re going to get your own hero episode shortly I’m sure, so save the backstory until then eh? The difficulty the feds now have is trying to find the kidney because I’m pretty sure someone didn’t post that they bought a kidney on their blog or something equally as simple. Instead, the feds are searching the transplant list for those who suddenly don’t need a kidney.

Fox River: (Oh I wish!) At a detention centre, Amita and Megan are going to interview Santi to see if the dead girl sans kidney is her sister. Santi is relived to know that the dead girl isn’t the title character from my retitled episode, Prita. It’s another one of the girls who flew over from India to sell her organs. Santi gives us the whole sordid tale about a mysterious man who arranged the kidney sale. The four girls have been in the country for four days and they stayed at the Baltic. When things went wrong with the girl from the morgue, Santi took off in fear, and when she returned later to the hotel, Prita was gone. Nothing funny here as I refuse to steal candy from blind starving puppies.

IHOF: As Don and Colby have clearly not seen Dirty Pretty Things, they are only just now figuring out the Eastern European night manager had to have been in on the organ sales. We also get some useful explanation about the recipient of the dead girl’s kidney and how he is now suffering complications. (Boo FREAKING hoo for you. Buying organs from those less fortunate? Cry me a river Justin Timberlake.)

Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital: (Oh I wish!) Megan is interviewing Dr. Bainsworth, who performed the black market organ transplant. He’s all lawyered up but he still provides us with the exposition that there is a “Kidney Village” near Chennai in India. We also get the start of the moral lesson for the week that there are 80 000 people on the transplant list and every day 17 of them die. The moral? Hurry up and die because other people need your parts. Megan’s annoyed that she can’t talk to the patient (poor rich guy with some dead girl’s kidney. I’ll call when I find some sympathy) and demands all the medical charts.

IHOF: Ivan’s quit his job at the hotel, leaving yet another dead end for our feds.

Cal-Sci: Amita arrives, clearly upset and we now get an entire scene of Charlie being all sympathetic. Here we get the story of Amita’s conflicted soul between her American upbringing and Indian heritage. We hear about how Amita ignored all her grandmother’s stories about India. Charlie suggests she try talking to her grandmother, who is a very wise woman. I’m totally enraptured in the scene as invoking grandmothers is a big thing for me. I miss my Gram terribly as she was the person I idolized most. I know, it’s not a funny comment but instead of funny here, I thought I’d go for true, in the spirit of the scene.

Now back to the regularly scheduled recap: OMGWTF? Amita just kissed Charlie out of freaking nowhere?

Wait, why am I so surprised? If Charlie were being that sweet to me, I’d do the same thing. I’m so taken aback by the surprise smooch that I really can’t think of much else to say, so I thought I’d leave it to the experts.

Ambulance Depot: David and Colby are trying to locate the ambulance in question, when, the ambulance driver, whose ears were clearly burning, pulls up. What ensues is the strangest chase ever recorded in television history. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern chase the ambulance through the streets of LA where it ends by the ambulance hitting a taxi, flipping over in midair and crashing. The driver is killed, leaving the pair with another dead end.

Fox River: Amita and Charlie go to visit Santi, nicely taking her clothes and toiletries. As Amita and Santi are bonding, Charlie gets a call from the feds and leaves. Amita is sufficiently awkward trying to explain that the initial bond Santi thought they shared isn’t the case. I have to give the actress props because usually people play off awkward as coy and it rings false. This time it didn’t. Plus, the mutual love of school and the extra sweet delivery of the religious items was a nice touch. I’m glad Amita listened to her grandmother on that front. I just wish Santi would stop with the whole taking candy from a blind, hungry, three-legged puppy thing. It’s making my job excruciatingly difficult.

IHOF: The dead driver wasn’t stupid enough to record all his illegal organ stealing so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern call in Charlie to help with the calculations to find out where the driver may have taken the organs or the missing girls. Charlie explains this very mathematically using a treasure map. The treasure? Dead people. Some treasure there. I’m going to go out to find that right after I wash my hair.

La Maison d'Eppes: Hey, it’s Don and Alan. In a scene! Together! We’ve actually seen very little of either of them recently so I’m wondering if this is the apology scene. Don’s stressed by the current case and is taken aback that Alan isn’t as surprised by the whole kidney selling racket. Alan gives us the other side of kidney buying but as much as I like Alan, this is the one and only time I’m going to say this. Shut up Alan. No matter how beneficial it may be for the recipient, this is still wrong on so many levels that I’m sure there’s a level in hell for “people who buy organs.” It’s right next to the level of hell for the people who talk in the theatre.

Math Garage: Dialing back the full out house campaign, Charlie and Larry have retreated to the Math garage to regroup before they try for the assault on the first floor den. Larry tells us of his recurring nightmares that his Aunt Louise (in a hairnet) would steal his internal organs. Somehow, this explains so much about Larry. Actually, they’re trying to work out where the ambulance would have gone with the girls and the kidney. Despite all these fancy calculations, even I can figure out where one would take dead people and organs. Say it with me people, the hospital!

Sacred Heart Hospital: Colby and David are at the hospital’s morgue where they’re interviewing the morgue attendant and discover that the ambulance driver had a contact there in the form of the other morgue attendant. While this should be the most important discovery in this scene, it isn’t. David discovers that there is one extra body, 5 instead of 4, in the morgue. I guess morgue attendant is an easy position, as counting to five, a requirement of preschool, isn’t required! Of course, it is the body of another one of the girls from Kidney Village.

It turns out this girl is not only not Santi’s sister Prita, but also this girl had all of her organs harvested. We learn that the human body, in parts is worth upwards of 300 000 dollars. The greedy side of me starts making lists of people who are going to provide me with early retirement. It’s bad, I know, but at least I don’t talk in the theatre.

IHOF: Charlie is explaining about how organs are matched up with recipients and it’s a very glossed over explanation of 6 antigens, urgency, distance, time on the waiting list, etc., that determines who gets the organ. (Can you tell I’m from a family that’s been through one? My explanation has more technical data than Charlie’s.) The plan is to use Santi to test for likely recipients of Prita’s kidney.

In a moment of falling through the rabbit hole, Don corrects Charlie about the odds of Santi and Prita’s bloodwork matching – 1 in 4. The hope is that they are lucky on the 25% match. I start looking for the Mad Hatter and March Hare? Wait, is that the Cheshire Cat in the corner?

Cal Sci: After trying to find the potential recipient, Charlie, Larry and Amita strike out with the transplant registry. Charlie and Larry figure the chances are unlikely to find the match. Which, if this were reality, would be accurate, but this is television and who is going to steal candy from a hungry, blind, crippled, and kicked puppy? Apparently, Amita’s desire to be the hero in her backstory episode can overcome even the odds. Once Megan provides the potential list of blackmarketeers for the organs, a match is found.

Random House Much Bigger Than Mine: Don and Megan are interviewing a Mr. Eckworth, who is in need of a kidney but could not get on the transplant list. They confront him with his plans, but he denies it, being afraid of the whole death thing. Don gets his moment of glory in this episode by realizing that in order to get through the kidney, instead of going after the man afraid of the reaper, go after the daughter, for whom murder to stay alive is much more horrifying.

The Street: Megan is interviewing dying guy’s daughter. We’re now fed the sob story about how much this poor rich man in a first world country needs the kidney from a poor girl oppressed by poverty. The sad part is that woman isn’t convinced by the sheer moral wrongness of the act of buying a kidney, but that the other guy who got a kidney from the same source died from contamination. (Killing a girl, fine but if the kidney’s dirty, we don’t want it. I love the smell of hypocracy in the morning.)

Another Baltic Hotel: Turns out Ivan the evil night manager is about to perform surgery at yet another hotel, with Prita as the donor for rich dying guy. We get another sob story about how Ivan was a great surgeon in Romania but one mistake cost him his career and we have a coda of Justin Timberlake because I couldn’t give a shit about this dirtbag.

Our heroes come busting in at the time required for the most dramatic effect, just as Ivan is about to slice and dice Prita. Everybody ready for the happy ending?

Fox River: Santi is playing with her prayer bracelet from earlier, looking as starving, crippled, crying, blind, kicked puppy as ever. There’s Amita, in her shining glory reuniting Santi and Prita. We get a very where is the violin crescendo moment when Amita says, “You gave us the information we needed. And I believe in the people that were looking for her and --” at which point Amita reveals her own little prayer bracelet. Twenty some odd years of an identity crisis wrapped up in an hour. Everybody hug.

La Maison d'Eppes: Amita has brought over some tradition American take out Indian food to share with the Eppes family and Larry. Do I even need to point out the irony here? Charlie takes a moment and crows about the unresolved plot point way Amita plans to spend her prize money, send Santi and Prita back to school. The remainder of the money she’s going to use to take a trip to India with her grandmother. Thanks a lot. I’m usually impervious to sappy endings but they had to go and throw the grandmother reference in again! Leave a poor recapper to snark in piece.

Don arrives with the in case you didn’t get it already moral lesson license as he’s now become an organ donor. I can think of quite a few people who would pay a lot of money to have him “donate” his “organ” to them.

Turns out Larry, Alan and Amita are all organ donors, but Charlie’s a bit squicky about the whole concept. For all Charlie’s math and logic, he’s afraid that Larry’s nightmare of having his organs removed while he still needs them may come true. Of course, that would be without Aunt Louise and the hairnet.

Just to make Charlie more uncomfortable, while, I must point out, we get a good view of his obviously fake license. Here’s why:

The family jokes about selling Charlie’s brain on e-bay. Yes, don’t we all love him for his brain? *cough*

Final Thought: Odds on whose backstory is next: 3-1: Megan, 5-1: Colby, 7-1: Alan. Betting starts now.