Episode Report Card Keckler: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT L.A. Whore-y
By Keckler | Season 4 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.04.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.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!"