Smart People Shows

Sharvil and I started watching Numb3rs today, from the pilot episode. We both basically decided that it’s really nice to watch shows that are sortof motivational in a way. Admittedly, they’re mostly designed to motivate you to watch more shows… but I think Numb3rs has been an important show for me, if for no reason other than motivating me to keep working on stuff when I’d rather not or when I’m nearly too frustrated to keep going. (I have been watching it for a couple years now, if that wasn’t obvious). Anyways, it’s usually worth the Numbers Painfully Awkward Lines and just general cheesiness and admittedly odd scenes. (Look up Numb3rs on TheRecapist and prepare to giggle a bit.) And it turns out a fair bit of the math is pretty legit, even if usually the equations he’s writing on the boards are sortof generic and not necesarily what he’s talking about.

But in any case, it has occurred to me that I really enjoy watching shows about smart people, or the nearest approximation you can get while still being a show. Charlie Epps is maybe the closest to what I aspire to, but Brennan and House in Bones and House MD are both great, brilliant characters. I have to say that the last season finale of Bones was a little sad in this respect, but you’ll have to watch it yourself–I won’t spoil it! And House goes without saying. Though, I think he ‘try the craziest thing you can think of and run with it to see how far it will get us’ works better in math and computing than medicine. At one point I had a list of the top ten episodes of House… I’m not sure I could come up with such a solid list for Numb3rs, but it’d probably be worth a try. Another day, another blog.