DIVIDE AND CONQUER CBS' ``NUMB3RS'' ADDS A NEW TWIST TO THE CRIME-SHOW FORMULA.Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer In this age of shorthand and jargon, some would try to describe the new CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. series ``Numb3rs'' as a cross between ``A Beautiful Mind'' and a crime procedural, or maybe ``A Beautiful Mind'' and a family drama. Whatever it is, ``A Beautiful Mind'' usually is in there somewhere, but co-creators Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci would rather skip the comparison to the mentally ill genius played by Russell Crowe. Instead, Heuton tells a joke she's fond of. ``A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are sitting at a coffee shop and they're watching a house across the street,'' she says. ``Two people walk (into the house) and then three people come out. ``The biologist says, 'Oh my God, they've reproduced!' And the physicist says, 'No, the measurement must have been wrong.' ``And the mathematician says, 'I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. about that, but if another person goes into that house, it'll be empty again.' '' Heuton and Falacci laugh immediately, and their guest on the set joins in a beat or two later. (If you don't get it, read to the end.) ``I'm the kind of person who finds that hilarious,'' Heuton says. ``That's how mathematicians are, though. It's that kind of odd skew (1) The misalignment of a document or punch card in the feed tray or hopper that prohibits it from being scanned or read properly. (2) In facsimile, the difference in rectangularity between the received and transmitted page. , that highly logical way of looking at the world that skews the way you look at the world, that I was into.'' The joke, and the fact that it can make a mathematician drop his chalk and slap his knees, is what inspired the premise of ``Numb3rs'' (typo typo - typographical error intentional): Don Eppes Don Eppes is one of the two main fictional characters in the television show Numb3rs. He is played by Rob Morrow. Don is an FBI Special Agent who recruits his mathematical genius brother, Charlie Eppes, to help him and the Bureau solve some of their most difficult cases. (Rob Morrow Rob Morrow (born September 21, 1962 in New Rochelle, New York, U.S.) is an American actor currently starring in the television series Numb3rs as FBI Special Agent Don Eppes. He is best known for his role of Dr. ) is a Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. FBI agent who calls on his gifted younger brother Wiki is aware of the following uses of "'Younger Brother":
Early life Krumholtz was born in Queens, New York to Judy, a dental assistant, and Michael Krumholtz, a postal worker. ), to assist in cases for which the solution may lie in mathematics. Charlie, a child prodigy Noun 1. child prodigy - a prodigy whose talents are recognized at an early age; "Mozart was a child prodigy" infant prodigy, wonder child child, kid, minor, nipper, tiddler, youngster, tike, shaver, small fry, nestling, fry, tyke - a young person of either , is a 29-year-old full professor at a Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, mecca for math and science studies which is unidentified but obvious to locals as California Institute of Technology California Institute of Technology, at Pasadena, Calif.; originally for men, became coeducational in 1970; founded 1891 as Throop Polytechnic Institute; called Throop College of Technology, 1913–20. in Pasadena. Caltech is the backdrop for most of the campus scenes and its mathematics chair, Gary Lorden, is one of the technical consultants. The home of their dad, Alan Eppes Alan Eppes is a fictional character on the television show Numb3rs, played by Judd Hirsch. Alan Eppes is the amiable father of Charlie and Don Eppes, and is particularly protective of his younger son, Charlie. (Judd Hirsch Judd Hirsch (born March 15, 1935) is an American Academy Award-nominated, Emmy-winning actor, known for playing the character Alex Reiger on the acclaimed television comedy series Taxi. , who holds a physics degree), is the brothers' meeting ground, in the physical and emotional senses. ``I think people who tune in to see a procedural are going to be pleasantly surprised and the people who tune in to see a show about a family, about a couple of brothers, might just learn some math,'' Krumholtz said. Charlie could run a quick equation to figure out how many minutes of CBS' schedule is held now by crime dramas and make a projection on whether it's reached its saturation point saturation point n. 1. Chemistry The point at which a substance will receive no more of another substance in solution. 2. The point at which no more can be absorbed or assimilated. , but for our purposes let's just say the answers are ``a whole bunch'' and ``almost.'' In its brainstorming phase, ``Numb3rs'' wasn't a crime drama. ``The idea was to do a show about a mathematician - which is very difficult to do in commercial television today,'' Heuton told an audience of faculty and students at a preview screening at Caltech. Even they sympathized. ``And we felt if we approached it through a genre people were used to seeing, we could bring in ideas that they weren't used to seeing.'' ``One of the most intriguing things we heard from (mathematicians) is that a lot of them consider the work they do as detective work, finding out how things actually work and why they work,'' Falacci said. Once they started research on math's ties to forensics See computer forensics. , they found scores of story ideas from real cases. Last Sunday's pilot episode is based on one in Louisiana in which a Canadian mathematician developed an equation to locate a ``hot zone'' in which a serial rapist lived based on the sites of his crimes. He was caught and that mathematician now is making a comfortable living selling his program to law enforcement agencies A law enforcement agency (LEA) is a term used to describe any agency which enforces the law. This may be a local or state police, federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). . Friday's episode, titled ``Uncertainty Principle,'' has Charlie taking input from previous acts by a pair of bank robbers (who are fairly routine in their work) to predict when and where they will strike next. Upcoming stories involve tracking the spread of a virus and cracking Internet security. One student at the screening asked whether they are concerned they'll run out of ideas. ``Not really,'' Heuton replied. ``Do you worry you're going to run out of problems? The most fundamental answer is, math can apply to anything.'' Heuton noted the irony in Americans' willingness to own up to their inadequacies in math skills. ``You would never go out and brag to everyone that you're illiterate. Anyone would be ashamed of that. But people happily go, 'I don't know anything about math.' '' CBS executives have speculated that ``Numb3rs'' could do for mathematics what the ``CSI'' shows have done for forensic science The application of scientific knowledge and methodology to legal problems and criminal investigations. Sometimes called simply forensics, forensic science encompasses many different fields of science, including anthropology, biology, chemistry, engineering, genetics, . But there's more to the show than complex proofs. ``We are really hoping to be able to expand the franchise a little bit and be talking a bit about how people who think like this interact,'' Heuton said. ``That it wouldn't always be a direct math application, but maybe a logic application or just a story that's about Charlie's world and Don's world and how different they are.'' ``I like to call it the Sherlock Holmes effect,'' Falacci said. ``Charlie can use direct math applications, but it's really also about his ability to use deduction and logic to cut through things that law enforcement might have certain assumptions about.'' That offers some relief to the show's art department, which painstakingly reproduces multiple boards of equations provided by Lorden and other experts, and Krumholtz, who is called on to ramble in the mathematician's specialized language as he scribbles complex notations. ``I have a thing later today that's just insane,'' Krumholtz said as a hairdresser tamed his mane in a trailer. ``It's a 2 1/2-page monologue of math. I try not to go to the place where I think no other actor has to do this. Because it is such an awesome opportunity, but at the same time it is an incredible challenge - and it's not necessarily in the acting book. ``Just finding the right tone for the math has been the most difficult thing. How much can people understand? Do we want to make excuses for our audience or not? Do we want to just bombard bom·bard tr.v. bom·bard·ed, bom·bard·ing, bom·bards 1. To attack with bombs, shells, or missiles. 2. To assail persistently, as with requests. See Synonyms at attack, barrage2. 3. them with really advanced concepts and see how they respond?'' There were a couple of Charlie lines in the pilot that drew unexpected laughs from the Caltech crowd: ``Some physicists do their own math'' and ``She's not my girlfriend - I'm her thesis adviser.'' ``That won't get laughs from our conventional TV audience,'' Krumholtz said. ``That's our sort of little homage to them, that's our little 'hello.' '' In addition to learning what amounts to a foreign language, his preparation for the role involved spending some fly-on-the-wall time at Caltech, observing mathematicians at work. He studied their body language, their high-speed notation, their speech patterns. ``It's almost like they get so lost in the math that they forget how to dress,'' he said with some affection. He was grateful for the warm, enthusiastic reception they gave at the screening. ``I can tell you I was very nervous. For me, their response was everything, because they'll be the most scrutinous, the most cynical if we do the wrong thing,'' he said. ``That they'd feel honored by the show - it's all that I hoped for.'' Sabrina Lloyd, who plays agent Terry Lake, says even with math aptitude she sometimes feels overwhelmed with the show's complex equations. ``But one of the things I love about the way it's written, and mostly about David Krumholtz and the way he plays it, is he has an amazing ability to articulate it so well that you can follow it pretty easily if you just listen. And that's all to his credit as an actor.'' Morrow said he initially had the chance to play the math geek A technically oriented person. It has typically implied a "nerdy" or "weird" personality, someone with limited social skills who likes to tinker with scientific or high-tech projects. The origin of the term dates back to the late 1800s. role, but he is very pleased to be the lawman instead. ``The good thing is I don't have to know (the math),'' he said. ``I have so much work to do that spending time on what he's into in terms of the math, I don't even have time. ``And I thought, I want some action. I love doing the action - it's like being a kid running around and playing war. And I'm not a gun I'm Not a Gun is an electronica/instrumental pop project of John Tejada and Takeshi Nishimoto. Discography
As for that joke: The mathematician, seeing two people go into a house and three coming out, reasons that the population inside the house is -1. So one more going in makes it zero - the house is empty. Still thinking ``huh?'' Just watch the show. Valerie Kuklenski, (818) 713-3750 valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com NUMB3RS What: An FBI agent taps into the highly advanced math skills of his brother to solve cases. Where: CBS (Channel 2). When: 10 p.m. Friday. CAPTION(S): 3 photos Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) CRIME BY THE `NUMB3RS' CBS hopes Rob Morrow + David Krumholtz = mathematical hit (2 -- color) David Krumholtz received a warm response from Caltech students for his portrayal of a brilliant mathematician in ``Numb3rs.'' (3 -- color) Rob Morrow had the chance to play the math genius in ``Numb3rs,'' but says he is relishing his role as lawman. Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer |
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