This week's Numbers episode, "Checkmate" — written by Robert Port and directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal — finds Charlie Eppes sent to FBI training... finally. This is a storyline I've been anxiously waiting to perform since the inception of the series. When a show like this is pitched to an actor, the actor's mind races through all the possible storylines for his character. This is a storyline that I thought would have been written earlier in our run, and I've been encouraging our writers to flesh out the idea for four seasons now. Finally Robert Port was good enough to make an "old" actor happy. (I'll be 30 in five weeks — eek!) Charlie's curiosity gets the best of him and he requests to be sent to FBI training in the hopes that he may learn more about the intricacies of FBI work, and thus form a greater kinship with his brother and the other agents. Factored in (no pun intended) is the fact that Charlie has been shot at twice, pursued in a high-speed car chase, and has...
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Dylan Bruno and David Krumholz by Michael Yarish/CBS
Episode 7, entitled "Primacy," of our fourth season was written by Julie Hébert and directed by Chris Hartwill and focuses on the world of video gaming, namely online role-playing games. I was thrilled that we were finally doing something about nerd culture (we do it again in two weeks with a great episode about comic books) because the show from its inception was meant to speak to that very wide-ranging audience of geeks, dweebs, dorks, nerds and four-eyes. I mean, just take one look at me, then get to know me and you'll quickly recognize a true nerd. I collected comics as a kid, and I am and have always been heavily into video games. From the Commodore system I had as a kid to the Nintendo 16bit system to the legendary Sega Genesis, to PS2, and now XBOX 360 (not to mention Game Boy and PSP), I've played them all.In fact, embarrassing tidbit: I broke my hand playing video games. How? I was playing a game called NBA Ballers for PS2, and I had made it to the unbeatable Yao Ming ...
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"Velocity" written by the series creators, husband and wife, Nicholas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton, and directed by Fred Koeller, is an episode that reveals the deadly truth about street racing. Recently, a young mother and her two young children were struck and killed by a racing motorist in L.A. The episode's Oct. 12 airing was timely, albeit horribly unfortunate. Nic and Cheryl have written our most conscienscious episodes. "Hardball" from Season 3, was an episode that exposed the dangers of steroid abuse amongst pro athletes. "Protest" starred legendary actor Robert Forster as an FBI agent who is desperate to conceal his corrupt past, until Don Eppes figures out that he was part of a much larger, true to life government conspiracy put into action in the late 60's to counteract the anti-war movement in the United States, a subject long considered to Taboo to cover. And in "Money For Nothing", Nic and Cheryl presented the plight of struggling African Nations in their attempts to deli...
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