"Velocity"
Series creators Heuton and Falacci wrote this one, perhaps explaining a stronger sense of both the "open" and "closed" mystery aspects of the drama that was present in the previous two episodes, and the greater attention to mathematical detail. So, to get right to the spoilers... I missed the explanation of why the LAPD would ask the FBI to look into a vehicular manslaughter case. I know the team initially saw this as vehicular manslaughter because they didn't see the original suspect stagger out of the trunk of the street-racing car he was suspected of running into a coffeeshop. Hence the first strong "open" mystery thread; we the viewers know that their suspect, lying in a coma in a hospital, was not driving in the illegal race, but no one else does, except perhaps the assailant who stomped his head. So we waited for the FBI and academic investigators to determine this. Then there were the "closed" mystery questions of who assaulted the suspect, and who the actual driver of the crashed car was. We also got a nice rundown of how the team, using various methods of scene recreation and detection, managed to simultaneously narrow the focus and tie the accident to a three-year-old "cold case" hit-and-run.
A nice turn from Chris Bauer as the engineer Ray Galuski; because of his size and appearance, Bauer usually gets to play louts, and frequently dour or self-involved ones at that, so it's nice to see him in a role where his character can be gung-ho but also intelligent and display a certain breadth of spirit.
Tonight's most obvious paralllel-drawing might be between the nature of Charlie Eppes' work on the mathematical measure of friendship relations, and the still-strained attempts by Colby and the other FBI agents, save the empathic Megan, to rebuild their trust.
The mathematics instructors who comment most enthusiastically on the official website for the series no doubt will approve of this episode; I suspect the Scotts, at least, were pretty jazzed to have the show take on illegal street racing as well. All sorts of matrices were exploited simuntaneously.
And thanks, folks, for such a lively discussion in the comments section.
