My Uninformed Impressions of Five Shows I’ve Never Watched

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: Inventorsdigest.com

Yeah, I watch a lot of television. I have a very long list of shows I enjoy, and I’m usually willing to give new ones a single episode trial run, at the very least. But there are only so many hours in a day and sometimes I have to write blog posts. So, inevitably, there are some shows I just haven’t seen. Sometimes I genuinely don’t want to watch something because it looks stupid. Other times, it’s just a sad reality of living: too much T.V., too little life to waste on it. But not watching a show doesn’t stop me from forming an opinion. Usually it’s based on partially glimpsed advertisements, tabloid news, overheard conversations, and muted commercials. Here are my uninformed impressions/opinions of five shows I’ve never watched. Enjoy.

Dancing With the Stars

Image source: Aroundthenetworks.com

It’s fun to watch people try to do something they don’t know how to do. Overweight people like Kirstie Alley give us an exciting real-time progression of before-to-after. People we think are unusual or otherwise freakshowish like Chaz Bono are encouraged, because what’s better than watching a freak dance? Nothing. I imagine there are lots of dance studio shots of celebrities breaking down or getting divaish. Also, there are long pauses before they announce the winners of each round. Am I right?

Hoarders

Image source: Fanpop.com

There is nothing less appealing to me than a reality television show that exploits people with real psychiatric disorders. It’s not cool to enjoy illness and suffering, no matter how shocking or sensational it may seem. This is the kind of show people in sci-fi dystopias watch on television—when all ethical and moral quandaries have been supplanted with Victory Gin and lobotomies.

Bear Grylls: Man vs. Wild

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Eff you, Bear Grylls. You’re not Steve Irwin and you never will be. I bet you have a film crew ready to bail you out every second and you secretly sleep in hotels when you’re supposed to be surviving on desert islands or whatever. Or maybe that’s the survival show guy? I don’t know. I’ve never watched him either.

Storage Wars

Image source: Latimesblogs.latimes.com

So this is where people go to storage units and fight over what’s in them, right? I can see how this could be awesome if the storage units were owned by like a Sting or a Jay-Z, but I bet Sting and Jay-Z pay their monthly storage bills. Instead it’s probably show after show of hagglers haggling over picture frames and candlesticks. Not to mention the poor people who get to watch their family heirlooms in a tug-of-war on T.V. No thanks.

The Real Housewives Franchise

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Considering my ridiculous attachment to Jersey Shore, maybe I should give this a chance. But I wonder, rather than oranging-up for a T.V. show, shouldn’t they be, like, bonding with their kids or doing other “real” housewifey things? It just seems to me like a bunch of filthy rich ladies with weird surgery faces complaining about their tiny dogs.

T.V. Crushes Worth Having: Starbuck

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: Icyte.com

If you thought my crushes were limited to emotionally precarious boy geniuses with floppy hair and OCD, you were sorely mistaken. My crushes also happen to include emotionally stunted, muscle-bound, girl fighter pilots named Kara Thrace. I don’t have a type: I have brainy girl crushes too (I’m looking at you, Velma), it’s just, there’s something about women butt-kickers: the legs, the attitude, and the kicking (with the legs). There’s also something about underwear scenes.

Image source: Pajiba.com

Starbuck (Kara Thrace) played by Katee Sackhoff, is an enigma wrapped in a gun-belt, wrapped in a cute tank top, wrapped in an angel-faced Caprican. She’s hot-headed and cocky, single-mindedly anti-cylon and pyramid-balls-to-the-wall alcoholic. She’s not about to do as she’s told but you better believe, when the chips are down, she’ll pull some twisty loop-de-loop maneuvers in her viper to save Galactica from nuclear missiles.

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I have to admit, I could never get into the original Battlestar. I’m not proud of my ignorance, and after this let’s please never mention it again. I mention it now only because it makes it hard to do a play-by-play comparison of Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck and Dirk Benedict’s 1978 version. I can, however, make a comparison between their equally awesome actor names that evoke certain anatomical treasures best left euphemized.

Here are the two Starbucks, in Starbucks, drinking Starbucks, smoking Starbucks cohibas:

Starbuck from the Original and New Series'

Image source: Geekologie.com

I especially love Starbuck when I compare her to the skinny, pointy, blond Cylon (Trisha Helfer) everyone seems so excited about. Puh-lease. Yes, Starbuck is by any account a 100% gorgeous woman, but she manages to also not be a stick-girl, which, while I wish I didn’t have to mention it because it shouldn’t even be an issue, is an issue and I do have to mention it.

Image source: Kateesackhoff.com

I don’t know if the network gave her a hard time about her weight but I would be surprised if they didn’t. She’s got discernible hips! You can’t see a single rib! I choose to believe Katee Sackhoff, true to her character, flipped a big fat finger at the network and played Starbuck just as she should have: curvily. I like boobs. Call me crazy.

Image source: Duckydoestv.com

One thing that kind of annoys me about Starbuck is her slight dip into the crazy sauce towards the end of the series. C’mon, S.B.! I count on your unerring fortitude, your flinty tenacity. Painting pretty pictures of circles all over the ship is not the act of a mighty, strapping young pilot. Although, sexy paint-spattered skin and outfits does kind of make a psychosis worthwhile.

Southie Pride: Boston’s Sub-Culture Is Wickeder than Yours

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: Huffingtonpost.com

Here’s what makes a good reality show: pride that runs deep, rivalries that are forever, militant home-town patriotism, hot babes, wicked good accents… oh and 495 Productions, the masterminds behind Jersey Shore. Get ready, America. Coming this fall, TLC will be bringing you a brand new reality show to sink your greedy vampire teeth into. It’s called Southie Pride (working title) and it’s going to be so revolutionary, so completely outside-the-box, so totally post-postmodern and, like, a comment on society. I’m only kidding in some ways…

I do admit to sharing my country’s fascination with the reality television phenomenon. Yes, much of it has gotten completely out of hand, trying to make entertainment out of the boringest people doing the boringest things (I’m looking at you, Say Yes to the Dress). But there are still some gems worth spending your life on. If you’ve been reading for a while, you may know how I feel about Jersey Shore. I love watching those strange, self-identified guidos and guidettes represent an underbelly of a culture of excess that’s just gotten so darn full of itself its liable to bust… like popped implants. It really is a comment on what we’ve become, and an orange brick road to where we’re going.

That’s why I’m actually wiggling in my boots over Southie Pride, and not cause I have to pee. I grew up near Boston and had a few good friends from Southie. It’ll be like watching Jersey Shore having known a guido. I think you can understand how thrilling that would be. Of course, the people of South Boston may not share my enthusiasm, and if I lived there I sure wouldn’t either. There’s no doubt in my mind that Southie Pride will make the citizens of Southie less proud—at least in the eyes of America. Leave it to reality T.V. to strip a place of the single thing that makes it great. Moving on…

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Thanks in large part to the brothers Damon-Affleck and their homage to the neighborhood in Good Will Hunting, Southie has been mythologized in popular culture as some kind of working man’s community picnic. FYI, Damon and Affleck DID NOT grow up in Southie. They grew up in Cambridge—home to Harvard University and MIT and very rich people and Au Bon Pain. My point is, how many relatively poor, kinda dirty, drug-riddled, crimey neighborhoods in America can you think of that seem so darn romantic?

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting

Image source: Freeextras.com

I know this show might suck. So much depends on the casting… and the direction, the editing, the film crew… the “movie magic” behind the “reality.” One thing it really has going for it is its all-girl cast. I’m a girl too! I can already relate. I’m also excited for the welling-up feeling I’ll get watching a bunch of charismatic, down-on-their-luck, tough-as-nails working ladies being there for each other. Sorry, people of Southie, but a cup of that, a tablespoon of good old Southie tradition, a pinch of violence, a gallon of Red Sox, three un-washed illegitimate children, a dab of boob flashes, some vodka shots: now that sounds like a recipe for good T.V.

I Left My Heart With Steve Irwin

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Anni M.

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There are some people in this big bad world that make it all seem less death-y and warlike and sad. People who transcend, like a hot air balloon held aloft with love… so, like an un-creepy/wholesome hot love balloon. These people are so rare they’re like the Vancouver Island marmot or the Yangtze River dolphin. You might see one if you travel to China, then sit on a rowboat for a week straight, then get lucky. Or you might see one if he gets a Discovery Channel television show. If you do see one, you’ll be changed on the inside—like a potato that starts out hard and kind of wet but then, once baked with the experience of a lifetime, softens right up and becomes mashable. Steve made my insides become mashable, which I discovered when he died.

Image source: Animal.discovery.com

It wasn’t just the croc wrangling, the crikeys, the goofy grin on a big face, the teary-eyed love for the crawliest spider, the khaki outfits, the strong legs… it was the ultimate devotion between man and wife, Steve and Terri, that turned my intense entertainment-style fascination into true, life-long admiration. Two peculiar, astonishing, almost agonizingly sincere people, both in love with all nature’s creatures, both enchanted by hiking boots and bangs… that they found each other is amazing enough. A more perfect union there never was. But then, that they found me, beamed from the other side of the world, smiling and dopey for crocs… I’ve never had warmer feelings for a coupla kooks I don’t even know, and I never will.

Image source: Animal.discovery.com

Steve Irwin was simply a delight to the institution of delight. Sorry Terri, you’re awesome too and surprisingly hot, but Steve had that thing that makes a man a monument. Steve Irwin didn’t sweat sweat, he sweat love potions: potions for wallabies, potions for snakes and potions for children of all ages. I think that’s why he was killed in the sea. His potions got trapped under his cute wetsuit. I joke, but it’s not a joke. Seeing Terri’s first interview after his death was so acutely painful, so completely miserable to watch… I’m still not over it. I don’t know how you bounce back from something like that—losing your perfect love.

Image source: Animal.discovery.com

On a lighter note: Bindi.

Image source: Animal.discovery.com

The girl is amazing: precocious, cute, and just like her dad. I have really high hopes that one day she’ll fill his muddy shoes in my heart. But what’s this music business? I keep seeing her on talk shows doing raps with creepazoid adult back-up dancers in matching outfits, and I think, “Bindi, you’re a fine girl! This is undignified!” Then again, when your dad was Steve Irwin, raising his fist and shouting “Whoo Hoo” and “Blimey, she’s a fine shiela!” all over international television, I guess you’re entitled to be a little hard-of-dignity sometimes. And I guess we better love you for it.

David Tennant: The Perfect Wack-Job Doctor With All His Alien Sexiness

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: News.bbc.co.uk

Every Dr. Who fan has his or her favorite Doctor. Its just part of loving something: choosing which parts you love best. (If you don’t yet love Dr. Who, start here). I’ve been a Dr. Who fan since I was a tiny nerd kid hanging out with my regular-sized nerd dad. At the time, Tom Baker was the Doctor—be-curled, be-scarved and be-dazzling. It didn’t hurt that my dad kind of looks like Tom Baker, or that I was an obscenely hardcore fan of robot dogs. Tom Baker will always be the original, held in the same esteem with which I hold the original Star Trek in all its rough-and-tumble, good ole’ boy glory. Not to compare Baker’s Doctor to Kirk—that would be like comparing crackers to crisps, or mitts to wits. But it’s the nostalgia—the love of my first guides through space and time mixed with grilled cheese and cozy Sunday T.V.—that’s the same.

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Since the third grade, I’ve been holding tight to my original “I Heart Dr. Who” pin. When the show came back on the air with Christopher Eccleston at the helm, I was a kid in hysterics. Not only was he flamboyant, dark, unpredictable and brash, his companion was the incomparable Rose Tyler: with her dauntless Cockney valor and former Brit popstar good looks, by far the best companion there ever was or ever will be.

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I was aghast when, after absorbing the energy of the time vortex, it became clear that Eccleston’s run would last but a single season. I might have given up there, if not for the return of Rose Tyler, whose luminous smile, quirk, and whimsy kept me on board for Doctor #10.

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Thank you, Rose Tyler. Without you, I’d have never known the cheeky smarts, the technobabble, the complex extroversion masking a 900-year ache, the spectacles (on his face, and in space), the moodiness, the heartbreak, of David Tennant, Doctor #10. Pale but never wan and with a remarkable sense of taste, Tennant’s Doctor demonstrated what a doctor could be: the object of abject love and devotion, universe-wide and beyond the fourth wall.

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It’s not just that Tennant nails the Doctor (which he does, firmly) but he nails my heart (also, um, firmly, ehem). Tennant is 100% dreamboat—tall, gangly, brainy—the perfect foil for John Barrowman’s brawny (and brawnily American) Jack Harkness. Tennant’s acting is also world-class—none of that tentative Matt Smith hipster fop— just confident, rumpled, wack-job Doctor in all his alien sexiness.

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It’s no big thing for me to claim #10 as my favorite Doctor. I’m probably in the majority. He is so good, so natural… I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Who is a real Timelord who decided, on a lark ‘round about 2005, to play himself on T.V.: stage name, David Tennant.

A Few of Television’s Best Robots

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: Gawker.com

As a sci-fi fanatic, nothing gets me more psyched than a good robot. People have an endless fascination with the human-like machine. It’s so awesome watching them scoot around on their little treads! Of course, not all T.V. robots are cute and cuddly—some are so human they make us question our own humanity, while others strike terror in the hearts of Time Lords. Here are some of my favorite television robots for your reading pleasure.

Rosey the Robot Maid

Image source: Robotanime.com

Apparently, in the future, we can dispense with that pesky paying-a-fair-wage-for-an-honest-day’s-work thing. No smoke breaks. No lunch. Just a sweet robot named Rosey to take your coat, discipline your children, and give you advice about being a good Spacely Sprockets employee.

Vicki the Small Wonder

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V.I.C.I., or Voice Input Child Identicant, is the robot daughter of Ted Lawson, a robotics engineer who’s attempt at building a domestic servant backfired when his creation turned out to be a super-intelligent, self-improving “real” girl. Along with his family, Ted creepily decides to pretend Vicki is their actual human daughter. Never mind that Vicki was the object of many a real young boy’s affections (or because of it) the writers decided the family would keep Vicki in their 12-year-old son’s bedroom cabinet. Somehow this didn’t bother the censors.

Star Trek’s Lieutenant Commander Data: Technically an Android

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I won’t lie: Data is my favorite mechanical creature on television, hands down. Created by Dr. Noonien Soong on the planet Omichron Theta, Data is a sentient android serving as Chief Operations Officer on the Starship Enterprise. Data is thoroughly loveable as he strives for his own humanity—struggling nobly to understand humor and human emotion, learning to whistle, satisfying a woman, and, in the season 2 episode “Measure of a Man,” proving his autonomy and civil rights under Starfleet law. Emotion chip or no emotion chip, the Data-Geordi bromance never stops.

Gypsy, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot

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Joel Hodgson’s wacky robot friends man-up to do battle with the worst movies ever made in the beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000. No peanut gallery is complete without their shadowy little heads. Gypsy is just in here because I felt bad leaving her out. Cambot, well, we hardly knew ye.

Dr. Who’s Cybermen

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Technically cyborgs, this race of mechanical men use spinning metal torture chairs to transform human beings (and other humanoid aliens, of which there are inexplicably many in the Dr. Who canon) into more of themselves. It’s kind of like the Borg if the Borg were completely incased in metal and had funny little rectangle mouths.

The Cylons

Image source: Criticalgamers.com

Battlestar Gallactica (the college years) hit a home run with their totally human-like Cylons (Cybernetic Lifeform Node). Unlike other robotic incarnations on television, the Cylons have emotions, they bleed, they plot… they do all the messed up bologna humans do. You know you’ve come a long way when you don’t even need albino makeup for your robot actors. Also, Battlestar Gallactica seems to understand something fundamental about my people: N.L.L.L. (nerds love Lucy Lawless).

Vinny is Depressed: Why Not Get a Zoloft Sponsorship?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Anni M.

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As you may have heard, Jersey Shore’s beloved Vinny Guadagnino has returned to T.V. Vinny left the house after developing anxiety, something he’s struggled with in the past and that, for some completely mystifying reason, has returned post Italia. First, as someone who struggles with clinical anxiety, I empathize with Vinny. Second, Vinny is kind of Superman. His delicate mental health withstood 4 seasons, a vodka I.V., Sammy and Ron’s harpy fights, innumerable incidences of physical violence, David Bowie-style consecutive sleepless nights, and a T.V. crew up his rear end 24×7. I think it was the unfortunate haircut that finally pushed him over the edge.

Image source: Mtv.com

I’m no doctor, but I wonder if “clinical anxiety” is really a fair diagnosis. I mean, yes, he probably does have it if he had it before, and yes, it is the kind of thing that can go away and then come back later… It just seems to me that being on Jersey Shore for 5 seasons would give any normal, healthy person uncontrollable anxiety and depression, let alone someone who’s already susceptible. The fact that so few of them have fallen apart emotionally is a testament to their robust Italian constitutions, or to their emotional numbness, or to the profit incentive, or to Xanax.

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It’s funny: getting falling down drunk every day and smashing heads into walls is considered quality reality television because it’s entertaining. Getting anxious, quiet and sad is no fun to watch—also it’s a psychiatric disorder. Rage is great! Sleeping is boring. Don’t just sit there moping, go beat up some strangers and get arrested! Face-plant on the beach and then have sex with a prostitute! GO GO GO!

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I felt Vinny’s desperation when his housemates ignored his miserable pleas for solidarity and understanding. I felt MTV’s desperation when they threatened the housemates with new roommates, forcing them to blitz Vinny at home and rip him from the healing breast of his mother. Now it’s just a waiting game: how long will it take before someone at the shore house really has enough of the media hounds, the papa razzos, the pickled organs, the rat cage… how long before Vinny or Sammy or, god forbid, The Situation, does something seriously deadly… I mean besides committing slow suicide with alcohol and head bashing… I mean committing faster suicide with heroin or a knife.

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I don’t think I’m being overdramatic, when Hollywood is practically buried in young, beautiful, DEAD stars and starlets. We know exactly what stardom does to people. We take a bunch of admittedly strange but otherwise healthy young kids out of their lives, we set them up for public ridicule, and then delight in knocking them down with public ridicule. As a lark, go back to season 1 and check out the fresh-faced, happy little Jersey Shore gang….

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Then take another look at season 5. They’re grizzled veterans. They’re on an endless tour of duty in an endless war: Jersey Shore.

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If we strip away the bronzed veneer, the truth is, the cast is in prison—an unusual prison where clubbing is encouraged and everything’s bedazzled, but a prison none-the-less. Vinny can’t leave. None of them can leave. Their identities are forever tied to this experiment, and what are they without it? There’s no escape, Vin. It’s a life sentence.

Alright, so I got a little morbid there. Vinny did get an immediate book deal out of this. And I do see one less-armageddony solution: get Zoloft to pay them all millions of dollars and then put them all on Zoloft. Oh wait, but then they’d be content and probably take up golf or knitting. Nevermind. That’s not good television.

The Geico Gecko Can Kiss My Fender

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: Tampabay.com

I’m going to jump out on a limb and assume that most of us dislike commercials. For many, they are simply a necessary evil of television. If you want to watch your show, you have to endure the overly loud, poorly acted, transparent salesmanship of today’s free market economy. Personally, I find commercials so abhorrent, such an assault to my sensibilities, such a complete waste of my life that I simply mute them and read my book until the show comes back on. But sometimes that mute button is just out of reach and the first few seconds of the commercial break catch me scrambling, my poor ear-holes wide open to the blaring, raw, profit-incentivized attack.

Now, most commercials simply irritate me, like a mosquito bite or a mewling cat. But then there are some that crawl up in my brain and wiggle around, tear at my eyes—like a horrific Internet meme you can’t un-see combined with that kid on the playground who screeched for half-an-hour straight, wrapped in a stinking, intestine-wrangling burrito, served up every ten minutes during Heroes.

I am, of course, referring to the incessant Geico commercials that refuse to die or even to change conceptually, from one year to the next, across all networks and at all hours of the day and night. The gecko is bad enough with its stupid Cockney accent (originally voiced by Kelsey Grammer), its saccharine cuteness and nonstop blathering. But that “film noir” Rod Serling wannabe Mike McGlone with his stupid eyebrows! His face, to me, is the face of everything that’s wrong with America—the profit-driven corporate culture that treats people like wet moneybags in need of squeezing. I’m sorry that Geico has transformed him into enemy #1. To be fair, I’m sure he’s a perfectly pleasant person, simply a victim of the insurance company of the beast.

Image source: Theinspirationroom.com

I find it endlessly ironic that an ad agency, paid to sell products, would create something so purely hateful, something so anti-sales. Never in my life have I not wanted to buy something so much. Sure, I don’t shop at Walmart because of their loathsome labor practices and I don’t shop at Target because they force their employees to watch anti-union videos, but simply not shopping somewhere falls dramatically short of what I’m inspired to do for Geico. I am so disturbed by their endless, soul-pulverizing, brow-beating, claptrap bunkum, I’ve turned into a worst nightmare—like if Frankenstein’s monster were a consumer anti-evangelist with a cute outfit, empty pockets and a close relative at the television networks. Or at least, that’s what I am in my imagination. In real life I bellow obscenities as I dive for the remote, then close my eyes until it’s all over.

Geico Cavemen and Money with Googly Eyes

Image source: Thefinancialbrand.com

At the very least they could bring back those idiotic cavemen and the money with googly eyes.

Laugh Tracks: You’re Killin’ Me

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: sniderogue.wordpress.com

There is nothing more annoying, more nail-screechingly appalling, than a sitcom laugh-track. I’m not a fan of sitcoms in general—they’re formulaic, predictable, fake-as-heck and just plain boring—but a sitcom with a laugh-track is like a fat-free frozen yogurt “sundae” with carob chips. It was disgusting already. Now it’s repulsive. Did you think I’d be fooled by “delicious morsel” imposters? Did you think I’d be all, “oh wow, this is totally chocolate!” Um, no.

Laughing is supposed to be the reward for a clever joke. It is supposed to be the delightful product of a job well done, erupting organically from an involuntary reaction to something funny or fun, like an amusement park. When a laugh happens, a real laugh, an angel baby gets its fairy wings… or something. A devil fairy gets its baby feet? Whatever, the point is: there ain’t no substitute for actual laughing. Period.

Image source: Sitcomsonline.com

The first laugh track appeared on the Hank McCune Show in 1950. I can only imagine the television executives being like, “Wait a second… fake laughter? Do you know what this means? We never have to write an actually funny joke again!” It’s like when Hormel invented Spam. In America, we have a long and storied history of replacing perfectly good real things with significantly less good fake versions of those things. It’s big business.

Image source: Webtrafficroi.com

I can’t watch a show with a laugh track. It doesn’t matter how funny the show is, how much I love the actors or how drunk I am. I tried to watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory and, for the first time in my life, I thought Blossom totally sucked. Yeah, I know, Blossom had a laugh track too. See, back when Blossom was popular, I was a kid. It may be hard to believe, but back then I wasn’t as super smart and wise as I am today. I heard a laugh track and I thought, “Oh look, there’s an audience, and they’re laughing.” I probably also thought, “huh, Spam, is that like some kind of chicken?”

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It may be a controversial opinion, but I think it’s good writing, good acting and good old-fashioned showmanship that make a show funny. My favorite comedy shows on television today—The Office and Parks and Recreation—don’t have laugh tracks. They don’t tell me when I’m supposed to crack up and I don’t need them to. The jokes stand alone, proud and tall, monuments to that old-timey, nearly forgotten television art: comedy.

T.V. Crushes Worth Having: David Krumholtz

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Anni M.

Image source: Wikipedia.org

I’ll admit it, I started watching Numb3ers because it was available on Netflix streaming, David Krumholtz held a title role, and I needed something to do whilst folding laundry. Despite the creepy tight mouth on Rob Morrow’s Don Eppes, and season one’s laughably daffy dialogue, Num3ers eventually grew on me as a show, but not as much as David Krumholtz’s Charlie Eppes grew on me as a tumor… a tumor of love.

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Unlike my Matthew Gray Gubler obsession, which started with episode one of Criminal Minds, I’ve been a Krumholtz admirer since he played the grumpy elf Bernard in the Santa Clause movies. That would make us both about 14 when the romance began: young love.

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But it’s his portrayal of Professor Eppes—the bumbling, emotionally available, math prodigy, crime fighter—that transformed my naïve adolescent crush into a world-wise, 100% adult, idée fixe. (For some reason French words make pervy seem, I don’t know, French).

What is it about a bumbling, floppy-haired math professor that drives girls wild? I imagine it happens every day in math classrooms across the country. Young, impressionable students swoon as bespectacled PhDs manipulate numbers before their kohl-lined eyes. I’m sure it’s a classic syndrome, like the Florence Nightingale effect. Sexy nurses, sexy mathematicians… same diff, right?

While DK has played many roles besides that of Charlie Eppes, and I will admit to an intense fondness for Mr. Universe in the Firefly movie, I don’t see any reason to dwell on non-Num3ers performances. The truth is, I’m more in love with Charlie than I am with David Krumholtz. Maybe that’s controversial to say. Character-love still isn’t technically legal in most states. And there is a strange emptiness I feel now that I’ve watched the final episode of the final season. Never again will I witness Charlie cocking his eyebrow in a new way. It’s heartbreaking. I’m only kind of kidding.

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I feel I should take a moment to appreciate the friends and family members that have supported Charlie over the years. Judd Hirsch’s Alan Eppes, Charlie’s father, never without an unsolicited piece of advice; Navi Rawat’s Amita, Charlie’s stupid, gorgeous, math genius girlfriend; Peter MacNicol’s Larry Fleinhardt, the theoretical physicist who encouraged a young Charlie to reach for the stars; the FBI’s rotating cast of tough-as-nails coppers with their varying degrees of math literacy; and of course, the criminals, without whose murders and miscellaneous violent crimes Charlie’s algorithms would not have been possible.

Image source: Ebsilk.com

I would like to not thank whoever is responsible for mutilating Charlie’s hair throughout the sixth season. I’m looking at you, Ron Scott, Hair Department Head, 2010.