TV Verdict

So. James Callis, fresh from his stint as charismatic sex-magnet cult leader Gaius Baltar on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, playing a charismatic sex-magnet cult leader on the season 4 finale of Numb3rs. Really? Really? Oh tv land …

Have to say, though, that Callis did a very nice job, especially with the accent. And he has a particular intensity, especially in the eyes, that lends itself to playing crazy sex-magnet charismatic cult leaders. But let’s not see him playing any more, shall we? Because hello — typecasting, let me show you it.

Numb3rs is an intriguing show. While it does follow the format of standard crime fare — the good guys versus the bad guys — the producers have always maintained an interesting mix of the professional and the personal. While it is largely a male-dominated narrative, we are again dealing with fiction that provides women with a space in which to be competent, heroic, massively intelligent and self-saving. There are women on the team who are friends, who aren’t portrayed within the context of their interest in men or a particular man. And this isn’t only in the crimehunters’ domain, the FBI, but also in the world of academia, where not only do we have an educated professional woman, she is a brilliant mathematician, an area of expertise where women’s effectiveness isn’t often highlighted. We also have a female DA who kicks legal ass. It’s a nice nod that she’s involved with the sometimes macho, always kick ass FBI team leader. Strong men who aren’t threatened by strong women -!
- tv land, sometimes you do win.

GRAND FINALE

In this season finale, genius maths geek Charlie is thrown into disarray when his genius maths geek girlfriend Amita is kidnapped by a crazy cultist complete with tribe of brainwashed women followers. Amita’s been taken so she can hack a credit card company’s computer database and crash it, thus precipitating a financial crisis that will break the US economy and bring about social revolution. Lucky for Charlie, his big brother’s a bigwig in the FBI so all resources are brought to bear in finding her. And just to make sure there can’t be any accusations of nepotism, in strolls out of town agent Ian Edgerton (played to perfection by Lou Diamond Phillips), who’s been tracking the crazy cult leader and assures them that they’re all on the same page with this important case.

One of the strengths of this series is its emphasis on character and relationships. It never descends into soap, but always keeps the spotlight on the importance of family — not only the family you’re born into, but also the family you create for yourself. In Numb3rs there’s an intersect, because Charlie consults for the FBI and his brother Don, and his brother has turned his team into an extended family. But Charlie also has extended family at his university, with Amita and best friend fellow scientist Larry, and since they both also help out the FBI what you get is this sprawling, super-extended family which connects and cross-connects. The final member of the family is the Epps brothers’ long-widowed father, Alan, who serves as a bridge between his once-estranged sons and provides wisdom and a left of field experience. He’s not the patriarch of this extended family, as such, but he’s a definite presence and in this episode particularly, because he’s a good father, he proves vital to saving Amita. Who, incidentally, is very busy arranging to save herself, by the way — but without Alan’s thoughtful care of his distraught younger son, all her brilliant work would have been for nothing.

The main reason this episode didn’t drive me insane, in terms of the sexual politics, is because while we had the mindless sex slave bimbos of the cult we also had Amita, the genius, who is deeply in love with Charlie but who is also brilliant and not afraid of being brilliant. I loved the fact that the brilliant crazy cult leader’s downfall was his contempt for women, even as he kidnapped Amita because of her computer coding expertise. And standing alongside her we have the women on Don’s FBI team, who are smart and savvy and really really good at what they do.

GENDER POLITICS

And that would be the point. When it comes gender politics in fiction, it’s not about never having weak female characters. It’s about having a wide range of characters so they can be judged wholly on their actions instead of being seen as some kind of gender stereotype. If we see smart women, stupid women, crazy women, dedicated women, then we have a better chance of seeing past gender to the humanity we all share. The same goes with so-called ‘minority’ or ‘diversity’ casting. This show is fabulous. It’s a real multi-cultural cross-section, which is important, but it’s not made an issue. Because Numb3rs treats its characters as people first, always and in doing so, makes a quietly profound social political statement.

Mind you, less gratifying was the obligatory sneering at the conservative side of politics. Both comments were completely gratuitous, the scriptwriters indulging their personal political persuasion for the belittlement of those with a different political viewpoint. I loathe that kind of petty, self-indulgent crap. Also it’s really stupid. Why would you go out of your way to offend viewers with that kind of nonsense? Do these people honestly believe that if you don’t share their politics you are worthy of ridicule? That’s just not smart from a business perspective. And it’s not worthy of a show that does so much else so well and so respectfully.

The other thing that was interesting in this episode was the portrayal of violence both by and against women. A lot of women die in this episode. They are shot by men. But in context, I didn’t get any nasty vibes from it. These women were criminals with guns trying to kill other people. They put themselves in the firing line and so were treated as enemy combatants. I really loved that neither Ian Edgerton nor the men of Don’s team hesitated to put down a woman with a gun in her hand about to commit murder. I love that there wasn’t any double standard about oh, no, we can’t shoot a woman. In this context their gender was irrelevant. And while it’s a shame that they became enemy combatants because they were mindless sex slave bimbos — well …

It was really nice to see some genuinely emotional moments between the two brothers. I found the recent ‘Don gets stabbed because Charlie screwed up’ story odd, in that there was really no exploration of the emotional impact of those events. I understand if the show wanted to avoid soap, again, and I also understand the characters as they’ve been laid out for us — but still, it was odd. And while there wasn’t a lot of emotional emphasis in this finale episode, what was there was very effective.

It ended on a lovely note between Don and his father, where Don acknowledged what they owed him. There was also a nod to the spiritual elements that have been touched on this season, and that was nice too. Profound but not preachy. And the last scene is Charlie proposing to Amita. They have a great relationship based on mutual respect and admiration. They complement each other perfectly. Where Charlie, helpless, struggled to function in his capacity as genius, it was Amita, the prisoner, who emerged cool, calm, collected and triumphant, even though she was scared spitless.

Great stuff. I look forward to another season of Numb3rs.

Photo: Monty Brinton/Randy Tepper / CBS
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