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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