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It's murder Entourage-style tonight on Numb3rs! You know the story. Small-town boy makes good in Hollywood. Small-town friend visits small-town boy-turned actor and finds a body. The thing is, the small-town friend found a body while recording all the rich and sordid details of the small-town boy's swank pad. The recording anonymously lands on the FBI's doorstep, and the body -- with Charlie's help -- is connected to driver's license and then a morgued Jane Doe. However, the body has a twin. At least, she's sort of a twin. See, the two are high-end hookers, and their madam paid to have them poured from the same plastic surgery mold. Now, one is dead and the other is sassy. Another member of the entourage ends up dead -- at the half-hour mark, of course -- just as he was about to spill some serious beans to the FBI. Turns out the entourage wasn't as happy as HBO paints it. The actor is being blackmailed by his entourage, because they were all witnesses when he accidentally killed his brother soon after they all arrived in Tinseltown. The parasitic entourage sucks the life and money out of the actor and also runs a bootleg movie deal on the side, and when anyone threatens any part of that little set-up, he gets killed by the actor's manager. On the personal side of things -- which were far more interesting than the case tonight -- David is still assiduously ignoring Colby, and Megan is trying to find out why. It's not because David can't forgive Colby, however; it's because David can't forgive himself. He feels guilty for believing all the bad hype about Colby, because after all that quality time they spent together on cozy stakeouts, he feels he should have known Colby was good. In other personal lives, Charlie procrastinates on his Friendship Math article, Amita worries about it, and Alan is really quite crabby for no discernible reason. Liz and Don almost sleep together before getting into a tiff over whether Don wants Liz reporting on Colby's behavior while they handle the Hollywood homicide together. Finally, after much babbling about how Colby the Hero will have his pick of assignments, we are left hanging as to where he'll be working at the end of the episode. Except that we're not, because there's no way Colby's leaving the FBI before he and David are BFF again. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
I really didn't like this episode, and I can't figure out why. Was it the total smarminess of the Hollywood set that had me wishing that Logan wasn't the only member to be bumped off? Was it the forced meta commentary about "how do you do math to solve crimes?" that rang desperate? Maybe it was because I was predicting other outcomes to the murder, ones which I thought were more psychologically intriguing than what actually happened. For instance, I had the entire Entourage as a sort of phalanx of protection who, in their single-minded adoration of Brett, set out to commit murders in order to shield him from himself. Like, Brett was sleeping with Tracy and she was killed because she was determined to be unworthy of him. Then, Tyler Labine look-alike Pete was likewise murdered because he stumbled upon the body. I had ideas of a gruesome discovery somewhere in the bowels of the pristine Hollywood pad.
Meanwhile, what I did like was that David's guilt over believing Colby to be a bad apple was the emotion driving him to ignore and distance himself from his former best friend. It went deeper than just the typical broody "Wah! You didn't tell me everything -- wah!" motivation, which would have been totally unworthy of David, since he of all people would know how impossible it was for Colby to come clean while undercover.
The Numb3rs numbers of the night: Number of attention-needy and potentially underfed hopefuls: 98,000. Liters of dead-body marinated water: 89.6. Number of parasitic, over-sexed buttmonkeys: 3. Home video frames per second that will get you convicted of murder: 30. Pausing TiVo mid-recap to watch Stanford beat USC: Priceless
Through a lens cap darkly, we hear a wry, I've-got-more-money-than-you voice say, "You might want to take the lens cap off, there, Spielberg." We get a quick glimpse of a face, and then the cam readjusts to hone in on a scruffy guy, who is complaining that "this camera stuff is lame" because he just wants to show off his house. Still, the Spielberg perseveres as his Hollywood friend strikes a wide-legged pose and then strides off to his house. It's large; it has large windows, large-breasted guests, and a large infinity pool. Large. As camera-guy follows his friend downstairs, they joke about what "the guys back home" will think and whether any of them thought their Hollywood friend, Brett, would "make it." A dick with a face -- who has crazy MALARKEY! eyes -- comes up to brag about the kind of "tail" he gets in Brett's shadow. Because to get to the star, they have to go through the space trash. After smiling up at the camera from a pair of breasts, Brett is told by another member of his entourage that they have to get to the studio. Brett stands up with the self-pitying sigh of one who has absolutely everything and says, "Studio owns me." He tells his non-famous, non-entourage friend to treat the house as his own. Camera Guy films Brett's bedroom, makes a comment about selling the sheets on eBay, films the bathroom, and makes a comment about taking a dump while watching the waves. He finally makes it to the large bathtub, which he sees is already inhabited by a floater. (And although we were well down the road of bathroom humor, this is not a Caddyshack floater.) The camera guy freaks out and start yelling, "Hey, hey -- somebody! Somebody!"
The camera appears to be put on the floor of the bathroom, and we pull back to see that we're in the FBI's situation room, watching the video on the big screen. David expositions that the recording was dropped off anonymously at the FBI a few hours ago, and they have since verified that the recording was made six days ago and there have been no 911 calls from the actor's house. Don cocks his head at the bathroom tile image and muses, "Brett Chandler is a pretty big star -- we better know what's up before we go after someone like him." Something about that cautious attitude from Don really grated on me. I mean, I know he's saying they could just be in for a world of red tape and potential defamation lawsuits unless they have something concrete, but I guess part of me wanted the pre-therapy Don, who doesn't give a damn about Hollywood glitz when there's a dead body involved. As for the identity of the victim, Megan explains that Charlie's working on getting them a clean image. Charlie walks in (or stands up?) at this point and begins a mathspaz. But first he has to be an ass by grabbing David's glass of water out of his hand. He goes on about refraction and pencils through a glass of water. And then we go into a mathvert. Oh, ick -- I thought this weird slow-mo, light-trails thing they were doing for Charlie's mathverts was just for the premiere, but it looks like it's here to stay. Guess I'll have to start taking Dramamine before watching. Charlie says, "Think of a gumball machine, packed with hundreds of gumballs. Imagine striking it with a sledgehammer." I'm sure David can think of something else he'd like to strike with a sledgehammer. Charlie's point is that after the sledgehammer strike, the ensuing mess is not random, because the path and position of the gumballs are all a result of specific forces acting on it. Taking velocity, momentum, and mass into consideration, they could use the end position of the gumballs to put them all back in the machine exactly where they were pre-sledgehammer. This is to explain that refraction works in the same way, so Charlie hits some keys, and by using Snell's Law and "a dash of Goos-Haenchen shifts" and a motion-tracking algorithm --VOILA! The close-up we have of half the dead girl's face floating on the surface of water is "turned around," and we get her full face. "Woo -- that's freaky!" Charlie laughs, rather callously in my opinion. He's shown due respect for dead things in the past, so I find it weird for him to be so flippant here. As they wait for the techs to run the reconstructed image through facial recognition software, David looks out of the situation room window and sees Colby walk in. "Look who's back," he says sourly. Megan looks up and smiles, and she and Don move to greet Colby. David doesn't follow and instead glares down at some papers.
It looks like everyone outside of the situation room is likewise interested by Colby's arrival at his cubicle. Empty cubicle, to be precise. "You guys don't waste any time around here, huh?" Colby comments, indicating his cleared-off desk. I was sort of struck by how the use of "you guys" and "around here" made Colby sound as though he were already removing himself from the collective of the FBI. I don't for a minute believe that he's leaving for a new position, but I was interested at his detachment, given how long he actually spent being one of "you guys" "around there." Don says they were instructed to send his stuff to Quantico. "Yeah, I could've figured," Colby mutters. Megan brightly asks how Colby's feeling, because he looks so much better that he did only hours after his torture. Colby shrugs that there's no appearance of permanent damage -- ah, but what of your relationship with David? -- and that he's just supposed to "sit tight" there until he gets reassigned.
David gazes out of the window at the conversation he can't hear. Liz wonders if he's going to go say something. David doesn't know what there is to say. Just then, Charlie interrupts to say they have a match on the facial recognition. Liz stares at an image and says, "That's her…[reading] Andrea Barton." Another match from the L.A. County morgue pops up, identifying a body as a Jane Doe. "I guess that answers the question [of] whether the video was real or not," Liz comments.
A landlady walks Megan and David to an apartment, commenting, "I was wondering why I hadn't seen Andrea for awhile." She holds up a huge ring of keys to let them in to Andrea's apartment. They hear noise from inside the apartment, but the landlady confirms that Andrea lived alone. While Megan takes over struggling with the keys, David peers in the windows and sees someone inside. This is a murder investigation, and the person in the apartment could be connected to that murder; why aren't they going all FBI on the door and busting it in? That combined with Don's odd behavior about the actor made this episode much more restrained than I'm used to Numb3rs being. David learns there's a window out the back, and takes off. Running. He dashes through a swinging gate. Megan gets the door open and pulls her gun, telling the landlady to stand back. Her bangs hang over her sunglasses as she takes her first offensive stance in the apartment. Can she see adequately enough to enter an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous area? By this time, David's in a garage. He hears a door slam and a driveway gate begins sliding back. Tires squeal and a red Mini Cooper drives off, not heeding David's running or shouts of "FBI! GET OUT OF THE CAR!" The car zooms into the street and away from David. At the last second, the driver looks back at David. It's the dead girl. David gasps out to Megan who he just saw. This is where I theorized that the dead girl was yet another member of the entourage who was looking to fake her own death to escape a former life, and had a hacker friend rig up the morgue image.
In the green light of the morgue, a sheet is pulled off Jane Doe's dead face. And this is where my theory died. Megan confirms that this is the girl David saw driving away. The coroner comments that the body's been there for three days, so…not so much. The body had been dumped in Runyon Canyon. David supposes she could have a sister, but Megan nixes this, having learned from the dead girl's mother in Tucson that Andrea was an only child. The coroner explains that he hasn't autopsied her yet, but he can give them some preliminary notes: the cause of death was drowning, but the bruising on the neck and shoulders indicates it wasn't accidental. Also, she's had breast augmentation, chin work, and liposuction. "Lipo!" David boggles. "She's barely a hundred pounds." Yes, but that's after the lipo, David. However, I love your commentary on the ridiculousness of size in Hollywood, since Andrea's mother said she moved out there to be an actress. Megan thinks it's time to rub shoulders with the famous Brett Chandler.
Pulling up behind a lot of flashy cars, Colby and Liz get out of the car, and Colby thanks Liz for letting him come along. "Seems like David wants nothing to do with me right now," Colby says sadly. "Aw, what do you expect? Come on -- you're a good guy, Colby, but you lied to him for two years," Liz reminds him. "I lied to you, too," Colby notes. Yes, but you and Liz didn't go on all those stakeouts that have meant so much to David. Liz says he only lied to her for six months, so she's not as invested in the relationship. She adds that she's not the one who teamed them up, anyway; Don was. "So you can keep an eye on me?" Colby demands. Liz tells him that out in the field, she's just like any other agent. "Right, except you're sleeping with the boss," Colby remarks. Calling him "Granger," Liz says she doesn't intend to report on him. Colby seems unconvinced. Getting the attention of some rather unattractive wannabefamouses, Colby introduces himself and Liz as "Agents Granger and Warner," and asks where Brett is. The Wannabefamouses are all, "Oooh, what agency? I'm desperate for love, money, and representation!" "FBI," Colby nods, and flashes a badge. Still completely clueless, the Wannabefamouses shove headshots at them and tell them about a showcase. Liz just says, "Yeah, where's Brett -- is he in here?" He is, so Colby just ignores the Wannabefamouses and walks inside. "Uh, what about my showcase?" one Wannabefamous pleads. "Yeah, wouldn't miss it," Liz says sarcastically. The Wannabefamouses bang fists triumphantly. Ah, Hollywood.
Colby and Liz gaze down at Brett's den of iniquity and descend the loft steps to walk out to the pool. Colby makes with the intros to Brett, and as soon as they hear "FBI," two members of the entourage look on their guards. But Brett himself just stands up from a tableful of beer bottles and purports to think it's "cool," since he's playing a DEA agent in his film and could pick their brains. The tallest Entourager stands up, folds his arms, and demands to know why they're there. Colby looks up at him and sneers, "Who are you?" How much I would love for this Entourager to give lip and then get thrown around by Colby for even presuming? The tall Entourager says his name is Logan and he "handles Brett's security." Well, given that Colby and Liz just walked right in, good job there, dude. Brett says Logan keeps him out of trouble. The other Entourager jumps up and bounds over. He's the one that bragged about all the "tail" he gets via Brett. He's also the type of guy who lets his mouth hang slightly open in that faux-threatening, slightly sneering, "I'm too cool to care that I look like I'm losing IQ points with every breath" expression. Puff Diddly Daddy has perfected that look. Brett introduces this parasite as "Josh Ryan, he's the one who usually gets me into it." Oh, how charming the bestubbled, chinless Hollywood wonder is! "You know, if you ever want to come up and hang out, you'd definitely make the cut," Josh drawls to Liz. Can Liz just, like, head-butt him or something? Seriously, these guys are so skeevy, I'm disappointed that only one of them dies by the end! Liz ignores this and confirms that all three of them live there. Colby hands over a photo of the body that they must have screen-capped and printed from the video. Brett's completely surprised as he says, "Is that? That's my bathroom." Oscar material, let me tell you. Logan insists it has to be a fake "or something." Given the body chilling at the morgue, Liz explains, it's real enough. Colby hands over the photos of Live Andrea they pulled from her driver's license, and asks if any of them recognize her. They swear to God they don't. Considering they probably think God is George Burns, that sort of oath doesn't mean much. Wait, that's not fair. At their age, God is Morgan Freeman.
Brett saunters back into his house, leading the agents, and says a lot of people come through his house because he has an open-door policy. Colby wonders how safe that is, considering his fame. Yeah, dude -- didn't you watch "Obsession" in Season Two? Brett comments, "That's how Brian would've done it." Who's Brian? His brother. Brett pulls up his sleeve to show an underdeveloped bicep and a tattoo on his lower shoulder. Is it a butterfly? No, it's his brother's name -- isn't that sweet? Brett explains that they "all" moved out there from Baltimore with dreams of being rich and famous, but Brian was killed in a carjacking soon after they arrived. "So this is somehow for him?" Colby asks. "Everything's for him," Brett says, raising his hands expansively, "and this would've been his way, you know? Share the wealth." Logan and Josh are trailing the agents. The Evil Dr. Mathra adds, "Meanwhile, they have Brian's body propped up somewhere like Weekend at Bernie's and they're all -- 'How's the view? Need a drink? More girls? Just let us know, bud, because this is all for you.'"
They arrive in the bathroom of death, and Liz asks where Pete, the guy who shot the video, is. "Pete took that?" Logan interjects, and exchanges a look with Josh, who quickly explains, "Pete is a buddy we grew up with. He was out visiting a week or so ago." And where is he now? "He split kind of sudden," Josh says, looking totally like Damien-cum-John Malkovich in this shot. "Guess we now know why." The actor playing Josh also sort of talks like Malkovich. Brett says he feels terrible about what happened, and he wants the agents to know that his open-door policy applies to them as well. Liz snaps a perfunctory smile at him, like, "Thanks for the generous offer, but we're the FBI; we can 'apply' it ourselves." Brett also wants to watch them work to see how it's done. "Pick our brains?" Colby supplies, echoing Brett's earlier words. Josh grabs at Logan's shoulders and grins, "It'd be awesome research!" Josh sort of frowns at this.
Chez Eppes. Amita lets herself into the house and is surprised to find bored, nothing-to-do Alan in the living room. "Oh! Hi!" she exclaims. "Hi," Alan returns flatly. Amita explains that Charlie gave her a key to keep Alan from having to get up and answer the door for her. "Oh, I don't mind getting up," Alan says. Is that his way of frowning on her having a key? Or the fact that even though Charlie owns the house now, he should have told his father he was handing out keys? Before Amita can really react with anything more than an expression of, "…Awkward," Charlie walks in. He's in the middle of cleaning the fish tank. "He's also already trimmed the rose bushes, straightened out the attic, and cleaned out the garage. If this keeps up, we're liable to have a new roof on the house by morning," Alan observes rather crabbily. What? Now he's mad that Charlie is finally actually doing some upkeep on the house? Seriously -- what crawled up Alan's butt and retired this week? As Charlie scrubs the inside of the tank with the fish still in it -- I don't have fish or a tank, but shouldn't you take the fish out so you don't mistakenly jab one to death with the scrubber? -- he explains that the reason for all this industry is procrastination. But of course, Charlie doesn't admit to procrastination, and instead says he sent his "old Friendship-Math" paper off to some journals to see if there was any interest in publishing. There was interest, "great interest," even.
"OH MY GOD! That is NOT how academic journals even work! It's not like a freelance writer pitching to Entertainment Weekly or Bon Appetit or Cat Fancy. You don't send them a short pitch to see if they'll bite, you write the entire piece, you send the ENTIRE piece, you send to ONE journal -- none of this shopping-around crap -- and you wait months and months before you hear anything at all. Any mathematician, even the rock stars, all follow this exact procedure. Sloppy, sloppy research, Numb3rs!" the Evil Dr. Mathra explodes.
Amita is thrilled and wonders why he's not working on the paper. Alan cites "procrastination," and Charlie admits that he'd like to make it more relevant, but he's blocked. I know! I know! He can get pulled in on Don's case and use Brett's Circle of Remoras as a breakthrough in his studies! Amita thinks Charlie's idea is great as it is -- he just needs to buckle down to work. Ignoring her, Charlie dips a large rock in and out of the fish tank (where the beleaguered fish are now wondering why they're experiencing a tsunami. Clearly, I've seen Finding Nemo too many times) and mutters that he thinks he can tell Don the size of the Bathtub Murderer. How's he going to do that? By realizing, but not citing, Archimedes's third-century-B.C. discovery of fluid displacement. Eureka! See, Don thinks the killer was in the tub with his victim, which would have caused the water to rise. "So when the killer climbed out, the level fell," Alan says, warming to the idea. "By a very specific amount," Charlie finishes.
FBI. Megan examines the video for more clues, but hasn't found anything. They also still can't find Pete the camera guy. Megan then segues into talking about Colby being on the case. Don admits that until Colby gets reassigned, he (Don) needs another agent. Megan observes, "He must be looking at a pretty prime post. I mean, after what he did, he's considered a hero." Don has nothing to add to that, so luckily David walks with some photos of Andrea Barton he found in her apartment. They're old photos, which show Andrea what she looked like before she Nip/Tucked herself. I can't see that the chick in the pre-cut photos looks too different from the dead one, but she's looking crabby in all of them. When faced with the question of why Andrea wanted the transformative plastic surgery, Megan suggests that Andrea wanted to change who she was, based on any number of psychological reasons. David supposes she could have been hiding from her past. Don suggests they talk to the plastic surgeon and see what he knows.
Wide-eyed and awkward, Larry and Charlie arrive at Brett's house, equipped with their obvious objects of geekdom: a huge plastic funnel and a huge plastic graduated cylinder. Once inside, Charlie boggles so much at the actor's house, it would seem he's forgotten about the HUGE 1909 California Craftsman he calls home in a nice, treed neighborhood of Los Angeles. I seriously doubt there's much of a price difference between the two. Larry is hysterically, predictably, and philosophically unimpressed. "Measured against my recent accommodation -- the space station, the Zen hermitage -- it's a little excessive," Larry muses. The monastery didn't look tiny, but perhaps Larry is referring to his personal quarters there. "It's excessive by any means, Larry, but it's still awesome," Charlie observes. "It's emptiness itself -- this tempts me not!" Larry declares, moving on. It must be a testament to their acting ability that these two manage to delivery those lines with completely straight faces.
In the bathroom, Larry quickly notes, "Oh, I may have to take back a portion of what I just said." He climbs into the tub and groans, "Nothing like this in the monastery and you know how I love a good soak." "That's about where she died," Charlie reminds him. "All right -- that's unpleasant," Larry says immediately, swinging his legs right back out. Hee.
Apropos of nothing other than my love for Larry, I think it would be fascinating to explore a storyline where Megan got pregnant. Imagine how philosophical Larry would get -- and, at times, freaked out -- about impending fatherhood and all the pressures and responsibilities it brings. It would also draw him even closer to Alan and once again make him an object lesson for Charlie, who would still be childless.
Brett shambles in to the bathroom and asks if they're with the FBI. Charlie is starstruck and stumbles all over himself. Brett acutely observes, "You guys don't look like FBI agents." Wait, I need to write an algorithm for how fast this meta anvil falls! Charlie explains they are professors of physics and math. Larry unnecessarily explains he's on sabbatical from his professorial duties. "So…you're not with the FBI," Brett determines. Larry slowly shakes his head, while Charlie babbles that they consult with the agency. "What -- solving crimes with math?" Brett smiles, thinking he's cracking a joke. The only thing that could have made this even more anvilicious was if Brett added, "Oh, yeah -- I've seen that show." See, when Psych did it with Shawn commenting how writing on transparent surfaces always worked for those Numb3rs guys, or when they had Lou Diamond Phillips parodying his Agent Edgerton character as "Special" (tm Shawn), it was funny. Here it's just too obviously self-referential. "Uh, no offense but how's that supposed to work?" Brett asks. Well, conveniently there's now a book out there that will tell you just that! Go! Read! Charlie then throws a lot of big and technical words at Brett as he explains what specifically they're going to do in the bathtub. He whips out a photo and says, "In this picture we can see that the final water level in the tub is just right about here." Charlie clambers into the tub and points. They know this level because of the area of wetness of the towel and where it was lying on the tub. Because the towel would have never gotten wet while the victim STRUGGLED DESPERATELY FOR HER LIFE. Meanwhile, the episode thread has already adequately ranted over the inaccuracies of the whole displacement result, so I'll leave it at: "Pah!" Larry takes over and says they will have to account for absorbency, evaporation, and bubbles, "but we do know that at some point, the minimum level of the water is just about here." Larry points. Charlie explains that the level is high, because someone else was in the tub. "The killer," Brett catches on. Charlie gives him a gold star and says when they determine the volume of the water between the two lines, they can come up with the "killer's body size." "Sounds like something out of a movie," Brett says. Charlie and Larry laugh with no irony at all. "Only not as cool," Brett adds. Oh, funny, funny man! Larry and Charlie's faces fall.
At Dr. Nip/Tuck's office, the plastic surgeon -- who should have been played by the ever-awesome Dr. Kenchy from Jericho, since he was a plastic surgeon before the world went bad -- smarms that women have millions of reasons for plastic surgery, but he doesn't care about them because the whys aren't the reason he's now driving a Bentley. Too bad all plastic surgeons can't be like Bill Pullman in Singles. Handing over the morgue photo, David says they don't want to know about all of them, just one patient in particular. Dr. Nip/Tuck asks, "Who is it?" "She's your patient and you don't know who she is?" Megan asks. "No, I mean which one of the twins? Andrea or Tracy?" Dr. Nip/Tuck clarifies. Megan says Andrea Barton was an only child. "Well, so was Tracy Mead, but I cut them to be identical," Dr. Nip/Tuck says. Dun dun DUN!
FBI. Don holds up the morgue shot and the driver's license photo and notes that the two girls look exactly the same. David agrees and says they were already similar before the surgeries, adding that their bathtub victim is not Andrea, but Tracy. How did the mix-up occur? Well, neither of them have fingerprints in the system, and Andrea was the only one to get a new license since the surgeries, so when they ran facial analysis, hers was the only one to show up. So, how do they know which is which now? I mean, how do they know Andrea is the live one and not Tracy? Not explaining that, David moves on to the fact that neither twin paid for their surgeries because they were billed to Leslie Dennis. "The Melrose Madam?" Liz wonders, and at Don and David's looks of duh, laughs, "Oh, come on -- you guys don't ever browse the trashy gossip websites?" Hey, is that a Defamer shout-out? But they're not really trashy, so maybe it's TMZ or Perez Hilton. Liz explains that the Melrose Madam was recently in trouble for tax evasion tied to running an escort service. Acting libidinally challenged, Don asks why the Madam would pay to have the two girls look alike, so David waxes knowledgeable about how "some guys" have twin fantasies. I'm not sure if I'm charmed that Don is acting so naïve about the ways of men's fantasies, or worried about his brain cells. Don sends David off to talk to the Madam, and Andrea to find out what Brett knows of either girl.
Don leaves the break room, and Colby walks in. David barely looks at him. Colby goes on about how David hasn't given him a chance to thank him for all the life-saving he did. "Goes with the job," David says, trying very hard to act nonchalant. Colby tries to cajole him out of "all this weirdness." "What do you mean?" David asks. "Two years of not knowing who your best friend really is? What's weird about that?" Colby wanted to tell David he was working undercover, but he couldn't. David gets that, doesn't he? "Yeah, man, I get it, and I respect it," David says, walking out with false unconcern. "Gotta get to work." Colby broods a bit. I think. Could be his usual expression. Or his Cro-Magnon brow.
In Charlie's office, Charlie and Larry do classified FBI work with the door wide open. Amita comes in to do nothing more than nag about Charlie's Friendship Math work. He stops her before she can even ask about it. Larry opines that he found some of Charlie's friendship math a "trifle subjective," and Charlie impatiently bristles and says the numbers "aren't transcending, they aren't finding the humanity." Oh, the humanity. Larry says you can't always find transcendence in human connections, and relates it to the bond between atoms -- some are eternal, others aren't, because they are fleeting and potentially catastrophic. Ooh, like Brian the dead brother is an eternal atom bond, but parasitic Logan and Josh are catastrophic? I'm so smart.
At the Whorehouse, David and Megan find the Madam and question her about Tracy. The Madam didn't realize she was dead, and is shocked. David asks about Andrea Barton. "What about her?" Andrea herself asks, sauntering sassily out. "Got away from you once already. Thought I should make it easier for you this time." "That's cute," David sourly observes, and demands to know why she ran. Andrea explains that she didn't know who they were, and since a lot of guys have twisted twin fantasies, it's not too farfetched to presume that they also might have fantasies about killing them. "So you knew Tracy was dead?" Megan asks. Andrea knew something was wrong because Tracy never went anywhere without telling her, so when she disappeared, Andrea knew something was wrong. Andrea also cops to her and Tracy being regulars at Brett's house, and how Tracy started going even when they weren't invited. "I think she was starstruck," Andrea tells the Madam coyly. Megan says that Brett and Entourage didn't admit to knowing the twins. "Then Brett and his friends lied," Andrea says steadily. Imagine that.
FBI. Colby leads Brett and his entire entourage, plus a new face we haven't met before, into the FBI. They're all bouncy and loud and happy to be on a field trip. They even brought a camera. "This is exactly what I was talking about, man!" Josh creels. "The whole place looks real! It smells real!" Do you think this is what Cheryl Heuton and Nick Fibonacci think of their actors? Logan hands out promo hats to cubicle dwellers. "Oh, it looks like the circus is here," Megan notes dryly. Colby introduces Brett and his entourage to Don. Mark Green, the new face, is Brett's manager. Don puts out a reluctant hand, and Brett shakes it, saying he appreciates them showing him around the office. It's going to be a huge help for his role. "It's our pleasure," Don says blandly, "we're all big fans around here. What do you think, Colby -- where should we start all of this?" Colby was kicking around the idea of showing them the interrogation room. HA! Brett and Entourage gasp with delight and follow Don into an interrogation room.
Brett sits down and looks around admiringly: "This is where you sweat out the confessions, huh?" "Yeah, somethin' like that," Don shrugs. "So, listen here, we know you guys lied to us." Mark the Manager tries to intercede, but Logan asks what Don is talking about. Don says they all knew who Tracy was. Everyone is silent. Brett finally forces out a laugh: "Okay! Busted! What, like we're going to admit to the FBI we had a bunch of hookers up at the place?" The Entourage laughs with relief. "We got a little bit freaked out -- we're sorry," Brett says, throwing up his hands to acknowledge defeat. "So that's it, huh?" Don says as Charlie saunters casually in. Brett insultingly says, "Oh, yeah, the math detective -- how're the calculations going, Professor, you find the killer yet?" Charlie flips open his notebook and says his calculations determined that the killer is "well above average in size." Everyone looks at Logan. Not because he's fat, but because he's tall. Don tells Colby to take everyone else out; he and Logan are going to have a chin-wag. Mark the Manager tries to say they aren't going anywhere. "Yeah, you are. Let's go, guys -- the three of you," Colby says, waving them out. They leave. Logan looks at Mark through the interrogation room's window. Mark's already on the phone. Logan admits he was in the tub with Tracy, but he didn't have anything to do with her death. "What -- did she turn you down? She was hot for Brett, you got angry?" Don leads. Logan insists that Tracy was into him, not Brett. They had a thing. And it was serious. For reals. Logan insists she was alive when he got out of the tub. "Then who killed her?" Don asks. Logan looks out the window again, leans down with a cautious look on his face, and lowers his voice slightly, "Look, I don't know -- not for sure." "Not for sure," Don repeats. Mark the Manager blusters in and tells Logan not to say another word because he just talked to their attorney and the interview is over. They have an attorney for all of them? Don follows them out with slight protests. Mark the Manager says, "So this is how the FBI works these days? You dupe these guys into coming down here and then you ambush them?" Hey, if they were dumb enough to believe they were just getting a tour after a body was found in their tub, that's not Don's fault. Mark the Manager says that nothing Logan said is admissible. Don doesn't think that's up to Mark. Mark goes on that if the FBI screws up Brett's new movie release by dragging him into a murder investigation, it's going to cost a lot of people a lot of money. SO the wrong way to argue with underpaid government employees! Predictably, Don says he really doesn't give a crap; he's going to continue the investigation, and if Brett and/or Entourage are involved, he's coming after them. Mark tells him to stay away until he has an actual arrest warrant. Just pop him in the face, Don!
At Liz's place, Don takes off articles of, well, not quite clothing, just accessories -- gun, watch, pocket change -- and complains that Logan definitely knew more. Liz comes into the room and takes off her shirt. This all seems like an overly decorous way to have sex. Maybe they're just getting ready for bed. Liz tells Don to forget about the obnoxious manager. Don sits down to take off his shoes and asks how Colby's doing. He's fine. "Yeah?" Don presses. "Focused?" Liz says rather edgily, "I said he did fine." Don leans forward questioningly. "What? If you want more, talk to him yourself," Liz snaps. Don boggles. Liz goes on, "It's hard enough to get respect out there when they all know we're sleeping together." Well, you're not doing much of that now! Don stands up and galumphs around, making irritated noises. He sarcastically thanks her for her help. Liz protests, but then her phone rings. It's Logan. He needs to talk to her, but if he says anything, everything will come apart. Liz tells him to calm down and asks what he means. Logan is standing outside of his car. It's night and he's parked at an overlook, so he's pretty much dead in t-minus-five. Don has emerged from both the bathroom and his pout and is looking questioningly at Liz. Liz says she's coming over to the house, but Logan says he's not there. He's in a turnout, and he tells her where. "It's all just gone too far, you know," Logan says. Liz says she'll be there in a few minutes. And he'll be dead in a minute because -- check your clocks -- yep, we are at the thirty-minute mark!
Don and Liz arrive and don't see Logan or his car. Liz suggests Logan went home. Come on, Liz! Don't you watch this show? They NEVER go home! Because they are both over the ridge and dead. Liz lifts up Logan's very bloody hand. I'll let it go this time because you're relatively new.
At the site, crime-scene photos of Logan's blood-streaked face are shot. Colby is heard saying, "Single shot, like you saw. Pretty much straight on through and through to the left hand." "Okay, so he saw the gun and probably raised his hands up as a shield," Liz extrapolates. "Yeah, a lot of good that did," Colby notes. You know, to shoot once and kill someone, you either have to be a good shot and know it or just think you're a good shot. I mean, those not that familiar with using a gun as a deadly weapon would seem to fire repeatedly to make sure the target is down and killed. It's usually the pros that get away with a single shot. Unless they're close enough to press the barrel of the gun to the head and be pretty assured of a kill. But that didn't happen here because 1) Logan had room to instinctively throw up a hand between his head and the gun, and 2) there's no scorching on the forehead where the bullet went in. If the barrel had been held to the head, there would've been scorching. Everything I know about murder I learned from Agatha Christie. Colby asks why Liz didn't call him when she got the call from Logan. "Because I was with Don," Liz says reluctantly. And by "with" she means "in the Biblical sense." And by "Biblical sense," she doesn't mean that they were having sex, but that they were arguing like Moses and Zipporah after Moses admitted to taking shrooms before seeing the whole Burning Bush laser show. Basically, the romance has gone out of Don and Liz's affair before we really got to know Liz at all.
ANY-way, Don comes over and says they need to find out where Brett and Josh were that night. Colby reminds them of Mark the Manager's threat. "Wait a second," Liz announces, "Logan lived in Brett's house, right? And that was his legal address and now he's the victim of a homicide?" "So we get a warrant to search his possessions," Colby finishes. "Yeah, that'll get you in the house, right? Good thinkin'," Don says, champing away at his gum. He wasn't chewing gum at Liz's house. Do you think he has a Pavlovian reaction with gum? Like, "Ooh, movement with the case! …Now, why am I craving Hubba Bubba?"
Daytime. Logan's house is semi-filled with subdued mourners. I'm sure they're mourning the lack of beer and loud music and pool time, not so much the tall entourage member whose name they couldn't remember except they know he hassled them when they initially tried to get into the house. As Colby and Liz enter the house and bounce down the stairs, Mark the Manager tells them they aren't allowed. Colby tells him they have a warrant. Mark the Manager has the gall to talk about them having no decency what with everything they're "going through," and looks over the warrant. No slouch, Mark realizes they can only search Logan's personal space, meaning the guest quarters alone.
Liz and Colby search with gloves on. Brett walks up the stairs and leans over Colby's area, noting, "This is so damned messed up." Colby comments perfunctorily, "I'm sorry for your loss, Brett," and keeps searching. Brett looks for sympathy by mentioning how he's got to deal with Logan's death on top of his brother dying four years ago. He sighs, "What the hell is going on?" Liz: "Where were you last night, Brett?" "I know you have to ask," Brett nods sagely, giving her a magnanimous pardon she wasn't seeking. Brett says he was at the house with Josh, but doesn't think there's any way to prove it because it was pretty quiet at Chez Entourage that night. "Of course now it's a circus again down there," Brett says pitifully, and adds Mark the Manager would go ballistic if he knew Brett was up there talking to them. He goes back downstairs. "Was any of that real?" Liz snarks. "Pretty good acting," Colby says, and then tells her to come over and look at something. "What? Do I really want to see?" Liz drawls. Um, isn't that your job, Special Agent? Colby found some huge data files being emailed to someone called "Love2love" at melrose-madam-dot-com. Liz assumes it was Tracy, and Colby agrees, but he's wondering what about the file made it so large.
Chez Eppes. Liz and Colby walk in. Liz hands Logan's laptop over to Amita and thanks them for helping out. Charlie claps Colby on the back and then grabs Colby's hand and pulls him in for a manly half-shoulder-hug, saying, "Really good seeing you again, man!" "Charlie was really worried about you for awhile. We all were," Amita says, and there's an inflection in her delivery that almost sounds like she's reproving him for errant behavior or something. Odd. Charlie brushes that comment off and says, "Yeah, but you're back here and you're a hero, man, and it's all good." Charlie frantically pats Colby on the back again just as Alan rushes in from the kitchen with a French press, saying, "Hey, there you are -- is that Colby? That's Colby!" He grabs Colby's hand and pumps it, grinning, "It's good to see you, I mean it!" I know they all liked Colby, but it's almost like they're overcompensating for doubting his allegiance in the slightest. "I can't tell you how happy I was to learn you're still one of, you know, the good guys!" Alan goes on. Colby shuffles uncomfortably. Meanwhile, Amita has pulled up the files and determined -- with knowledge that doesn't come from being a mathematician -- that Logan was sending movies to Tracy. Alan waxes nostalgic about how time was, you took a girl OUT to a movie, but now you email them? What is the world and generation coming to? I don't know about emailing movies, but since my old-age impatience can't handle cell phones, talking, or even food chomping around me at a movie theater, I'd rather Netflix everything. The movie Logan was emailing is called Breaker's Edge. Amita has seen ads for it, but it's not out yet. Alan wonders how Logan could have been emailing a movie that's not even out in the thee-ay-ters yet. "Well, pirated DVDs are a huge industry -- the FBI has a whole section devoted to that," Colby explains. Do they have a section devoted to bittorrents as well? I'm just wondering. For no real reason. Honestly. Amita looks for a digital watermark, something the company who produced the DVD would have hard-coded so that any piracy could be traced back to a source. Just as long as it's not a dirty cartoon watermark that makes you lose lots of paper business. Amita discovers that the watermark shows the DVD was issued to Brett Chandler.
David and Megan have returned to the Melrose Madam, who doesn't understand why the FBI thinks she would know anything about such sordid affairs as piracy. David shoots back that nothing goes on in her House that she doesn't snatch a percentage of. Megan explains for us that, as a big star, Brett had a steady supply of pre-released movies. His dead friend, Logan, was emailing them to Tracy. Now they want to know what Emily was doing with them, because she certainly wasn't starting up Movies Without Pity. The Madam tries to deny knowing anything about what the girls in her "legal dating service" do in their spare time. David tells her that if she's not helpful, they could suddenly find a reason to look more closely at her "legal dating service." Finally, the Madam coughs up the names of two brothers in Hollywood, who run a club called Bedouin. Do you think the brothers actually know what a "bedouin" is, or just think it sounds sexual? The Madam requests they keep her name out of it. "Yeah, we'll be real discreet," David says, wryly. "Oh, yeah," Megan says with the same sincerity.
Bedouin (all in lowercase font, of course, because any use of uppercase is too establishment). Megan and David walk through a door propped open by a flimsy old Hefeweizen box. They flash their badges at the first flunky they see and ask for the Lee brothers. Without a word, the flunky walks off to not earn his SAG card. While they're waiting, Megan decides to analyze David and how he's treating Colby like a 1992 Clint Eastwood movie. David shakes his head and goes on about all the stuff he told and trusted Colby with on stakeouts. Well, Megan reasons, they were all fooled. After all, Colby was looking for an FBI mole, so he was really investigating all of them. David asks, "That doesn't bother you at all? Honestly?" Instead of answering and possibly explaining what she was actually doing at the DOJ last season, Megan allows herself to be distracted by a delivery flunky pushing stacked beer boxes on a dolly out the club's door. David looks around and muses that it's weird to be taking alcohol out of the bar instead of bringing it in. David then crouches by some boxes and pulls out DVDs, just as one of the Lee brothers comes down to meet Megan. David accusingly holds up some DVDs of a movie called Lost Hills, and Megan tells the Lee brother to put his hands behind his back. She starts to cuff him, but catches sight of someone in the balcony with a gun and yells, "GUN DAVID!" As the Lee brother runs away, she tumble-rolls and pulls out her gun to fire at the balcony. David fires at the Lee brother, who is now behind the bar with a gun. Megan gets a good shot off, and Balcony Man grabs his left shoulder-chest area and falls forward off the balcony to the ground. David reacts to the fall by defensively aiming his gun at the fallen body. When the body doesn't move, he yells at the Lee brother behind the bar, "Think about it -- unless you want to end up like your brother out here!" The Lee brother protests, "Okay! All right!" and puts his gun on the bar, his hands over his head. He slowly stands up.
Interrogation room at FBI. The unshot Lee brother slouches in a chair. David walks in and says they just got a call from the hospital about the shot Lee brother, but they won't tell him how his brother is until they get their answers. After impassively looking at photo of Dead Tracy and Logan, Lee says he doesn't know anything about Logan. Finally, the Lee brother says that the Melrose Madam's girls are always ending up in Hollywood houses, so they had a standing arrangement that any girl who could snag him an unreleased movie got five grand. Tracy got him ten to twelve movies in the last six months. "She was my big earner," the Lee brother says fondly. "Because she was sleeping with one of the guys," David snaps. "Because she had leverage," the Lee brother corrects him. Don and David stare at him. "I don't know -- maybe Brett Chandler was gay or something, she didn't tell me. But she had dirt of some kind and she knew how to use it."
"Blackmail," Charlie crystallizes for us. After Don reminds them of Logan's final words to Liz about everything falling apart, David supplies that Logan and Tracy both had this dirt on Brett. However, what's bothering the mathmo is that Tracy was blackmailing Brett for months, so why was she suddenly killed? He then launches into a game-theory mathvert about risk and response analysis, using an analogy about a lioness protecting her cub from a jackal. Until the jackal crosses a line deemed intolerable by the lioness, the jackal is safe. However, when he crosses that line, the lioness will launch and attack and kill to protect her cub. The Evil Mathra stares off into space, musing, "Some examples are so trivial as to be insulting to game theory." The point is that Tracy demanding DVDs is low-risk; so something changed to up the threat enough to have her killed. He offers to Charlie through this area of basic game theory, and Don sends them off. Meanwhile, Colby has finally found Pete, alive.
In the interrogation room, Don finds out that Pete hightailed it out of Brett's place after shooting the video. "Oh, yeah? Why?" Don wonders. "Why?" Pete boggles. "Well, there was a DEAD girl in the BATH-tub!" Pete goes on that Josh and Logan didn't want to tell anyone, not even Brett. They just wanted to get rid of her so no one would know. If Logan and Josh were with Brett on the way to the studio and Pete came running out, all freaked, how would Brett not have known? Also, Logan was all "it was serious" with Tracy, so why didn't he freak out when she was killed? Don can't believe they just let Pete leave with the video. Pete admits that he pretended to erase it because he was playing along with them, but when he didn't see anything on the news all week about the death, he decided he needed to say something, so he sent the video to the FBI. Don stares Pete down. "Listen," Pete says half-nervously, half-sadly, "those aren't the same guys that I grew up with, right? They've changed."
Eppes Garage of Math and Suitcases. Charlie chalks calculations, and Amita bitches that he's still not working on his article. Then she and Charlie both explain to David what they're trying to figure out. Amita says they're determining what all the players stand to gain from exploiting the secret, versus how much they stand to gain from protecting it. David crystallizes it: "And at what point does it make more sense to kill you than to pay you off?" Alan stumbles in, looking for sprinkler parts. They're by the hoses. Alan complains that Charlie cleaned out the garage and now he can't find anything. Charlie doesn't respond and instead frowns at the board. "Something's bothering you," Amita shrewdly observes. "Tracy was killed, but the threat she posed still remains," Charlie notes obliquely. How the hell can math tell him that? "It can't. It's stupid. It's psychology, and not math, because Charlie's quantifiers are always made up. It would have made so much more sense for Megan, the psych person, to say, 'They're still acting threatened.' It's disingenuous, misleading, and insulting to say that the FBI needed a mathematician to grok that the threat still remained when a mathematician can't do that -- not in the way that Charlie is purporting to do it!" the Evil Dr. Mathra explains, grading papers violently. His poor students. David wants more explanation. "You know that analogy I gave about the lions and the jackal? Tracy might be dead, but the model is saying that the jackal is still out there," Charlie goes on, by way of not really clearing ANYTHING up. Alan comments about it all sounding like a Raymond Chandler novel: "Movie stars, blackmail -- you've even got the evil twins!" Ah, but which one is sporting an evil goatee? David has a breakthrough and tells Charlie to plug the Alive Andrea into the equation rather than the Dead Tracy. Charlie does, and gets a result of $298,000. The hell? "That's it," Amita says languidly, "she's the missing piece." Megan and David return to the Whorehouse and stand to Andrea's beach chair. "I was wondering when you'd be back," she smiles up at them.
Interrogation room. Megan confirms that Andrea's email address is Love2love, which makes her the blackmailer, not Tracy, and asks what she has on Brett Chandler. Andrea stares at Don and pouts, "What's it worth to you?" Don frowns disgustedly at her and says she's in no position to deal. "I'm in exactly a position to deal -- I can help you catch a killer," Andrea prims. Oh my god -- she's wearing a tight black knit dress. She's got on spiked heels, and the dress is a sleeveless turtleneck that hits above her crossed knees. If she uncrosses and recrosses her legs, I'm taking an ice pick to my television set. Don wants to know how she found the secret out in the first place. Logan told Andrea something about Brett -- pillow talk, Andrea assumes -- and Tracy told her. "She was really into the twins thing -- thought it made us best friends," Andrea notes with a sneer. "Some friend," Megan points out. Andrea says they didn't even know each other before the surgery, but they were similar types, so the Madam put them together. After that, Andrea saw her opportunity. "So, it doesn't bother you that your 'opportunity' got Tracy killed?" Megan asks incredulously. "Like I said, she wasn't my real sister," Andrea protests, and then sighs that she's getting bored. She tells Don he gets her info only if he guarantees she's not charged with blackmail. "You tell us, or I'm gonna guarantee you're charged with an accessory to murder as well as blackmail," Don says with a smile. Andrea gives him a sassy sidelong look and purses her lips. She leans in conspiratorially and asks, "What good is a secret if you can't share it anyway?" She asks if they know about Brett's brother. All they know is he was killed in a carjacking. But of course it's not the real story, Andrea says. So, Andrea was the one blackmailing Logan? Or did Logan think Tracy was blackmailing him? And that Lee brother, did he know it was Andrea who was his "big earner," or was he also duped with mistaken identity? This episode is hole-ier than a fifty-pound drum of Emmenthaler cheese.
Chez Brett. Brett finds Colby and Liz in his living room, and acts all pleasantly surprised. Colby tells him that the secret about his brother is out -- they know he killed him. Brett looks warily at them and repeats that his brother was killed in a botched carjacking. "Check with the police." They did. Colby explains that the only witnesses were him, Josh, and Logan, and they all gave identical reports. Not similar, which would be natural, but word-for-word identical, which is unnatural -- unless it's rehearsed. Liz flares her neon pink lipstick at Brett. Brett babbles that he loved his brother and never would have hurt him. "Then why don't you start showing him the respect he deserves," Colby menaces. "Tell the truth. Stop acting." Brett sits down in defeat. He had just landed his first role and they were all out celebrating. They were drunk and they had a gun. They were fooling around in a bar parking lot and he was using a gun as a prop. As you do. The gun went off, Scott-Scanlon-style. But instead of accidental suicide, it was accidental murder. Brett sighs, "I'm glad it's out. I am! They can't hold it over me anymore." "Who?" Colby wonders. "My guys! My boys," Brett says, sarcastically gesturing outside. "Why do you think I let them live in my house, drive my cars, and spend my money? If I cut them off, it wouldn't have been ten minutes before they sold me out to the tabloids." "That's what Logan meant when he said everything would fall apart," Liz explains to Colby. Colby tells Brett that the three of them had a motive to kill Tracy -- Tracy, not Andrea?! -- but with Logan dead, it's just Josh and him. …UGH! I still don't get why Tracy was killed! Is it because she told Andrea, and was the reason why Andrea was blackmailing them? Is it because they thought Tracy was Andrea and therefore the blackmailer? Or vice versa?! This is RIDICULOUS!
Brett gets this look on his face and says, "No, Mark Green knew, too, and Josh was with me when Logan was shot, so…" Comprehension spreads across his face, and he runs outside and flings open the door to the deck. He's just now figuring this out? Why didn't he realize this before? It's not like he didn't know until Colby pointed it out that he and Josh were together the night Logan was murdered! Who the hell did he think killed Logan if not Mark? "You son of a bitch! You killed Logan?" Brett sort of yells. Instead of hissing, "Lindsay Lohan-ic breakdown" to all listening, Mark leaps over the balcony railing. Colby leans over the railing and looks down. Mark pulls a gun out of his back waistband and shoots at Colby, totally missing him. People screech. Colby jumps over the railing while Liz runs around to head Mark off. Mark runs near the pool, firing behind him. The mooches by the pool scream and soil their suits. Mark grabs at a useful bikini and holds her hostage, warning Colby not to get any closer. Colby tells him to "Let. Go. Of the girl." Mark says he has nothing left to lose, so he swears he'll kill her. And then what? Liz runs down the interior stairs and onto the patio. "Drop it!" she yells. Mark swings his gun to her, letting go of the bikini. Liz fires once at his right arm, and he's hurled into the pool. Shedding his jacket, Colby jumps in after him and pushes Mark the Murderer to the side. Liz hauls him out.
FBI. Don compliments their work. "Kinda doubt it's what the ADIC had in mind when he told me to sit tight, though," Colby comments, swaggering through in a cozy, dry FBI hoodie. Liz says Mark the Manager refuses to talk, but they now have his gun, so ballistics will tie it to Logan's murder: "Also, the U.S. Attorney hopes to leverage him for a confession on Tracy, too." Don looks over the cubicles and sees Brett being led through. Colby explains that Brett has been nabbed for his brother's death, but he knew nothing about the blackmail because Logan and Mark kept it from him. And Josh? Because Pete said Josh helped get rid of Tracy's body. Won't Josh also get charged with accessory to murder and/or covering up a murder/obstruction? "Just to protect their ends, huh?" Don comments. He hands over a yellow envelope to Colby and says it's from the director's office: "Wouldn't be surprised if you could pick wherever you want to go ." Colby takes the envelope silently. Don and Liz leave.
David's again watching Colby from the break room. He tells David, "Colby and I were pretty tight. Everything went down and he looked dirty. I believed it." Megan wonders if that's what's bugging David, his own guilt at believing the worst about Colby. "Maybe it just proves we weren't that tight to begin with," David says. Megan hands him a cup and tells him he doesn't really believe that. Colby has opened his letter and read it. He looks around calmly before tucking the letter back in. He's totally going to pull a Riker and stay with the Enterprise.
Chez Eppes. Alan gathers everyone up to go somewhere. Amita and Larry get their stuff together just as Don and Liz walk in. Larry's invited all of them to go have dinner at the monastery. Larry explains it's their monthly open house, and he thought it might break down some of the mystique about him living there. "In other words, he's tired of our stupid questions and figured it would be better for us to take a look ourselves," Alan translates. Larry invites Liz and Don as well. Liz is excited, Don less so. "Prior to his complete nervous breakdown, Brother Michael ran a successful restaurant right here in town," Larry explains. Then why was Larry complaining about carrots and broccoli and coarse-grain bread last week? Liz convinces Don to go, and Amita goes to fetch Charlie because he can't do much on his own. Like not keep people waiting. Charlie is at his computer, writing. Amita stops short and asks, "Are you writing?" "Uh, the block's gone, I got it now," Charlie mutters, barely acknowledging her or the fact that he's not going out to dinner anymore. Amita asks what changed. "My observations of Brett Chandler and his friends or Colby coming back or it could've even been you and Larry but I know what I want to say about friendship -- I know what goes along with the math," Charlie mutters. I'm glad he knows the "math" of friendship, because he still doesn't know the niceties. Amita is quietly pleased for him and looks at the blackboard, which is now covered with a title, "Simple Linear Mode," and calculations about Romeo's love for Juliet and Juliet's love for Romeo and how they are "both out of touch with their own feelings." Amita is glad to hear it, and quietly leaves him to it. This year's friendship math is last year's cognitive emergence. Greaaaat.
"By the way -- what's the title of Charlie's magic paper, again? 'A Mathematical Analysis of Friendship Dynamics'? Yeah, why haven't we heard what his main theorem is? Can he not at least state in human terms what it means? Wait, of course he can't, because the writers have no idea what he should even say!" the Evil Dr. Mathra screeches, tearing at his corduroy elbow patches. "Even the TITLE sounds too navel-gazing to be something that asserts an actual result, so WHY would any journal accept a paper like this, sight unseen?" I think I'm going to have to use those parental controls to block the show from him from now on.