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Numb3rs Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
14 Episodes 2005 - 2005
Episode 0
Unaired Pilot
Tue, Feb 3, 2026
The original Pilot of NUMB3RS was produced in 2004. Test audiences questioned the believabilty of the Eppes family being related. Cast and script changes led to the series being picked up by CBS. The series later premiered in 2005.
Episode 1
Pilot
Sun, Jan 23, 200544 mins
A serial rapist who marked his victims by branding continued his escalating gravity by committing is presumably first murder. FBI Special Agent Don Eppes is in charge, under Agent Walt Merrick, of a massive investigation. Don's brother, professor Charles 'Charlie' Edward, a mathematical genius, takes a single peek at the map of the thirteen crime locations at their dad Alan's -and still Charlie's- home and claims he can roughly calculate the common point of origin: the rapist-killer's home. Charlie analyzes and applies such variables as the safety zone and the spontaneous non-randomizing of human 'arbitrary' choices, and achieves a 4/5 probability, as tested on earlier serial killers. Charlie's academic friend Dr. Larry Fleinhardt suggests he should concentrate on true mathematical challenges rather than 'trivial' real-life distractions. Charlie's prediction shows 87% chance for a zone with only 75 men, but no judge will grant a search order based on Charlie's work, so DNA is taken from their trash. Charlie then points out the data from victim 12, Karen Silver, is probably wrong because she lied. The correction yields a smaller zone that is 96% precise, within the previous one, where all men were already cleared. The common 'base' is there, only not the perpetrator's home.
Episode 2
Uncertainty Principle
Fri, Jan 28, 200543 mins
The bank-robbers known as 'Charmers', who pulled off 16 robberies without any violence, even courteous, are studied by Charlie, who correctly predicts their next place and time to hit, but Donny's SWAT team is caught in a shooting with casualties at both sides. Donny is lightly hit physically, but Charlie can't handle 'failing' and putting his brother in danger, feels guilty, says the equations are no longer valid because of the Heisenberg-principle (observation changes the phenomenon, and the smart robbers even realize it), but is unable to concentrate on anything else then an unrelated, impossible maths problem. Left to its own, Donny's team discovers the shot bank-robber wasn't bank-employed programmer Malcolm Stapleton as his ID says: the criminals, who probably have a military background, stole the real one's identity, after torturing and murdering him. Charlie snaps out of his escape-maths and realizes the robberies aren't about cash but even more valuable financial data...
Episode 3
Vector
Fri, Feb 4, 200543 mins
The FBI is called in to help trace discretely and hopefully contain a fatal infection. Thus Don learns to his surprise that Charlie actually already has even higher security clearing than his big brother, being an NSA consultant. In collaboration with the Atlanta disease control center, the epidemic is diagnosed to be one, or as Charlie later helps discover two, vicious strains of the Spanish flu which wiped out more people then the first world war. For security reasons, the brothers can't tell why they try to keep dad away from the city's most endangered quarters. Charlie's brilliant chaos theory application is their only change to work out patient(s) 0, the source, and spread pattern. Don concentrates on bio-tech firms which almost certainly provided the virus, and the harder, open question of motive, yet key to arresting the culprit.
Episode 4
Structural Corruption
Fri, Feb 11, 200560 mins
Finn Montgomery (21), an architecture student at Charles' college, is found under a bridge, apparently suicide by jumping, but Charles insists the body didn't land right. Finn was on anti-depressive pills, having recently been dumped and reported a fellow student who was expelled in a fraud case. Charles finds that Finn has discovered, but not detailed, a construction flaw in tycoon Elliot Cole's prestigious skyscraper. As Finn contacted him, the architect and the construction firm may have motives.
Episode 5
Prime Suspect
Fri, Feb 18, 200542 mins
Emily Burdick, the kid daughter of brilliant but eccentric mathematician Ethan Burdick, is kidnapped, yet he sends the police away, even Charlie Eppes, who he respects scientifically, as soon as he hears FBI agent Don Eppes is his brother. This time maths may well be the problem: Ethan claims to have solved the elusive Riemann-hypothesis, a very prestigious challenge involving prime numbers, worth a major award, so a rival may want to steal it and/or sabotage him...
Episode 6
Sabotage
Fri, Feb 25, 200540 mins
FBI agent Don Eppes asks his genius brother maths professor Charlie's help to catch a train saboteur who makes fatal victims and leaves as calling card always the same long, arranged sequence of digits. However the 'unbreakable code' this time seems not to be one, just a long sequence of numbers which all refer directly to avoidable accidents he 'recreates' as revenge. Understanding parts of this allows to predict his next move, so Don gets to confront him on the spot...
Episode 7
Counterfeit Reality
Fri, Mar 11, 200542 mins
When FBI agent Don Eppes finds several murders are linked to counterfeiting, his mathematically genial brother Charlie uses his skills to do what other investigating methods -as used by Agent Kim Hall, Don's colleague and ex in his Albuquerque days, a blank chapter in his past for Charlie- failed to, locate the forging and identify who did the graphical artwork required for his old-fashioned, relatively hard to detect fakes with real printing presses and watermark, not computer printing: it's a missing artist, who must be kidnapped and will probably by murdered as a liability for the counterfeiters...
Episode 8
Identity Crisis
Fri, Apr 1, 200560 mins
When Riley, who practiced an ingenious pyramid method of skimming numerous bank accounts for over half a million dollars, is strangled, exactly the same way -not revealed to the press- as Lisa Bayle, for whose murder Don Eppes' investigation once put Cliff Howard in jail after a plea bargain-confession, Don now fears the wrong man was arrested. Charlie helps him quantify the unlikeliness of a coincidence and seriously doubt the forensic evidence. Electrician Jose Salazar, whom Don suspects, still turns out to be innocent of Lisa's murder, but Charlie realizes that's not the point: what if a third person committed both murders, linked rather by the victims?
Episode 9
Sniper Zero
Fri, Apr 15, 200560 mins
Several people are killed in L.A. by a sniper. Don brings in specialist FBI Agent Edgerton from Quantico, whose empathic approach goes against Charlie's pacifist nature, but when his own numeric analysis fails to clarify the case Charlie decides he must learns to shoot, despite dad Alan's worries Don shouldn't expose his brother to such dangers. First they believed in one serial killer, then the obvious racist suspect Wayne Osborne fails to fit, so Charlie fears it's a copy cat-epidemic, yet several cases fit the original sniper...
Episode 10
Dirty Bomb
Fri, Apr 22, 200560 mins
A truck with enough weapon-grade cesium for a 'dirty' nuclear bomb is stolen. Shortly after a huge ransom is demanded. Charlie accepts his college physics professor friend Dr. Larry Fleinhardt's help and after the beans were accidentally spilled planologist dad Epp's. The fiends however detonate a regular bomb early, as turns out as a distraction to rob the leading art restoration firm's vault. After police work leads to the rogue truck driver and his accomplices, Charlie uses to probability calculus to induce collaboration so the cesium, which is leaking fast, can be recuperated.
Episode 11
Sacrifice
Fri, Apr 29, 200560 mins
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt's former college days friend Jonas Hoke, the Senior computer-science researcher, who develops for Robert Oliver's firm Lorman group with gifted college drop-out Scott Reynolds a classified program to evaluate government projects, is murdered in his Hollywood Hills home; data were stolen from his computer, which only contains a coded program for analysis of baseball statistics. Hoke's financial divorce complications seem irrelevant, although his wife had a relationship with their security system installer Lucas Grant. However Charlie finds that Hoke actually used the same kind of advanced statistic analysis and performance prediction on other data, cleverly masked under meaningless baseball numbers: Hoke applied this method cutting-edge to calculate human performance prospects in real life, based on various governmental and other data, potentially far more valuable...
Episode 12
Noisy Edge
Fri, May 6, 200560 mins
The US Air Force and air traffic control seek FBI help when a UFO flying over LA seems a possible terrorist threat. Charlie finds mathematical ways to combine and filter radar observations to identify routes and craft type. It's a flying wing design, like aeronautic engineer David Croft and his former partner Gosnell invented. Don tracks down the last, who indeed build one with his son Blake and Paul Ridenhauer's German venture capital fund as investor, but is missing. Inspired by chaos in golf, which he plays to please dad, Charlie helps figure out where to, thus discovering a killing.
Episode 13
Man Hunt
Fri, May 13, 200560 mins
A prison transport bus crashes after maneuvers by two other vehicles, several inmates escape, including the dangerous McDowd. Charlie gets on well with CHP Officer Morris on the scene and works out mathematically it was no accident, both other drivers probably were in the game. Dad is worried Don might be returning to the period he regularly worked in fugitive retrieval, especially now a former colleague, burly federal marshal Cooper, is on the same case. After finding a lesser fugitive, Charlie's mathematical probabilities approach helps reconstructing the remarkable movements of McDowd in LA, which leads to a worrisome motive relating to a DEA case and likely further accomplices...
