Numb3rs, Season One

Charlie Eppes:
Everything is numbers.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Here's a discussion: Why is it we remember the past and not the future?

Charlie Eppes:
That's a tough one, Larry.

Amita Ramanujan:
Actually, I'm spoken for, Mr. Eppes.

Alan Eppes:
Really?

Amita Ramanujan:
Back in Madras my parents arranged for marriage to a family friend. Nice Hindu banker from Goa.

Charlie Eppes:
Really? Getting married?

Amita Ramanujan:
God, no. He's a total ass.

Charlie Eppes:
Numbers don't lie.

[On P vs. NP]

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
You know that it's considered unsolvable?

Charlie Eppes:
Well, certainly people who have failed to solve it think that.

[Don and Charlie are arguing]

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
I'm going to go contemplate the koi pond.

Charlie Eppes:
Please understand, sometimes I can't choose what I work on. I can't follow through on a line of thinking just because I want to, or - or because it's needed. I have to work on what's in my head. And right now, this is what's in my head.

Don Eppes:
I guess I was inspired by Mr. Heisenberg, just like Charlie here suggested.

Alan Eppes:
Heisenberg? What do you mean, the physicist?

Don Eppes:
Yeah.

Alan Eppes:
Oh. Your brother goes into a dangerous confrontation with heavily armed felons, and you prepare him with a lecture on the movement of subatomic particles.

Charlie Eppes:
I've gone months without leaving the house.

Charlie Eppes:
How do you forgive yourself if you're wrong?

Don Eppes:
You don't. We can't be wrong.

Charlie Eppes:
Larry, have a minute?

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Yes. Because we all have exactly the same number of minutes at all times, do we not?

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Let me ask one thing. When we met just now, was I coming or going in to the library?

Charlie Eppes:
Larry, you were coming out.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
[sighs] My memory is a memory. All right. [starts back inside]

Charlie Eppes:
[yells] Larry, you were coming out.

Don Eppes:
I mean, I'm just trying to get my head around the fact that my little brother consulted on an NSA issue that went high enough up for you to call the Assistant Director by his first name.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
One student even said I'm out of touch in cutting-edge thinking in multi-dimensional theory. That one alone kept me up at night.

Charlie Eppes:
I once had a girl in my combinatorics seminar tell me that I was disorganized and I talked too fast.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
That's an accurate observation, actually.

Don Eppes:
Low-key and memorable aren't mutually exclusive. You know what my favorite date ever was? Pepperoni pizza in a Laundromat.

Alan Eppes:
Yes. Which explains the conspicuous absence of grandchildren.

Security Guard:
Excuse me, what are you doing?

Charlie Eppes:
A simple experiment. It's a pendulum.

Security Guard:
Sir, you and the pendulum need to leave.

Charlie Eppes:
Okay … it drew an ellipse.

Security Guard:
Now.

Terry Lake:
Some guys like women who can handcuff 'em.

Don Eppes:
Can't blame 'em for that.

David Sinclair:
Mr. Haybridge, please don't make me follow you to your office and question you about fraud and possible murder in front of your clients.

Ethan Burdick:
You're here to talk your brother in the door, and in case you haven't realized it, I don't have time to waste.

Charlie Eppes:
Look, I think you'd be better off letting him do his job, because he's actually pretty good at it.

Charlie Eppes:
What do you think we should do now?

Don Eppes:
The same thing when I was in school and I didn't know the answer - fake it.

Charlie Eppes:
It's not a code. It's a story told in numbers.

Charlie Eppes:
I'm sorry, but does that ever work? Just coming out and being so … obvious?

Amita Ramanujan:
Well, if it's the right guy, sure.

Alan Eppes:
Is that Amita sitting in the car out front?

Charlie Eppes:
Yeah. We just stopped by for a minute, so I can check this text on encryption and codebreaking.

Alan Eppes:
And you left Amita waiting in the car? No … no. This is not the way we treat people, Charlie. You bring her inside, you at least offer her something to drink. You know, like an adult.

Charlie Eppes:
We just stopped by for a second.

Alan Eppes:
You came in 15 minutes ago, Charlie.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
I'm avoiding Laurel Wilson.

Amita Ramanujan:
The professor of philosophy of science?

Charlie Eppes:
She's the lady you go hiking with?

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
For years we've enjoyed this … I don't know … delightful wilderness-based friendship, entirely platonic. But last night, she and I just veered … we veered off into the carnal.

Amita Ramanujan:
I'm taking it didn't go well.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Actually, it was incredible. It was primal. I mean, in the animal, not the numerical, sense. But what I'm saying, this was a perfect event, and, as such, untwinnable.

Amita Ramanujan:
So, because the sex was great, the odds are against it ever being great again.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
The replication defies the laws of probability.

Amita Ramanujan:
[dryly] So, why try?

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
[missing the sarcasm] Yes, yes. That's why I'm here. I mean, it's the perfect refuge.

Charlie Eppes:
What do you mean, "the perfect refuge"?

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Well, the math department must be the least libidinous place on campus.

Terry Lake:
He's showing us what he's capable of.

Don Eppes:
Well, now it's our turn.

[Terry and David refused to leave Don and the guy with the bomb]

Don Eppes:
Guys, for following orders, not your best moment, but thank you.

Don Eppes:
I want you to know I don't take for granted what you do.

Charlie Eppes:
I never thought you did.

Alan Eppes:
Well, it seems like your new math consultant is working out nicely.

Don Eppes:
I gotta tell you, dad, I can't think of anyone who could have helped us the way Charlie did in this investigation.

Alan Eppes:
You just remember how Charlie is. Can't seem to quit a problem. He's still working on the same one he's had since grade school.

Don Eppes:
And what's that?

Alan Eppes:
Trying to impress his big brother.

Charlie Eppes:
Math is nature's language: its method of communicating directly with us. Everything is numbers.

Don Eppes:
A guy drops 70 bucks in a dive bar. He's either buying rounds for the house or else he's wasted off his ass. Either way, he's gonna stand out.

Don Eppes:
What'd you do, you opened it? What is with you, man? Even when we were kids, you were always going through my stuff.

Charlie Eppes:
You always had cool stuff.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Oh, I see we're off on yet another exciting area of criminology.

Charlie Eppes:
It's like the evidence proves him right and wrong at the same time.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Oh yeah, the old paradox of Schrödinger's cat.

Alan Eppes:
Is that that Persian that keeps hiding out in our garage?

Charlie Eppes:
Uh-uh, it's an intellectual exercise.

Alan Eppes:
I knew that.

Charlie Eppes:
You know, I've been running some numbers from your minor league days. I wanted to see which ones were the best pitches for you to go after.

Don Eppes:
Charlie, I don't like to think about it too much, all right?

Charlie Eppes:
Why not? If you can analyze your performance, you can improve it, Don.

Don Eppes:
Some things are about how it feels.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Children are wormholes. They're portals into the unreachable future and unattainable past. Well as .the things stand now, they exist only in the theoretical realms.

Amita Ramanujan:
Well.. I consider, you might have some trouble selling a woman the idea of carrying your wormhole.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Evaluating my immediate prospects for a conventional nuclear family, I've just now begun to consider adoption.

Charlie Eppes:
How long have you been considering that?

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Three days.

Charlie Eppes:
Give it a few more days.

Don Eppes:
What, you didn't think I'd have a back-up plan?

Charlie Eppes:
In the first place, uh, we-we're not even sure that there, that there is a bomb, so …

Alan Eppes:
Bomb?

Charlie Eppes:
Well, we don't know where it's gonna go off.

Alan Eppes:
Well, maybe not, but I would suggest that people quickly taking a ride out of town in an easterly direction might be of help right now.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Well, possibly not with these current wind conditions.

Don Eppes:
Look, what you hear stays in this room.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don Eppes:
A truck carrying three casks of this stuff was hijacked this morning.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Oh, that's not optimal.

Houser:
We're fairly confident that hasn't happened yet.

Don Eppes:
You're fairly confident?

Alan Eppes:
Listen, Charlie, if you've got one failing, it's only that you don't think like a criminal … 'course, what does that say about me?

Alan Eppes:
I heard that, uh, Don was leaning towards the wife.

Charlie Eppes:
That's right.

Alan Eppes:
Seems to be the first place they look nowadays.

Charlie Eppes:
I don't understand. I mean, if you hate the person you're married to that much, get divorced.

Alan Eppes:
Even the thought of divorce holds its own special horrors, let me tell you.

Charlie Eppes:
Well, you and mom never thought about … I mean, I was never witness to any kind of …

Alan Eppes:
That's exactly the way we wanted it.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
You know what they say: Applied physicists are from Venus; Theoretical physicists wonder why it spins in the other direction.

Don Eppes:
Hey, Charlie.

Charlie Eppes:
Hey.

Don Eppes:
What's up?

Charlie Eppes:
Just grading tests for my non-linear dynamics class.

Don Eppes:
Glad to see you're taking my advice and having some fun.

Agent Cooper:
We spent two weeks in a cemetery once, waiting for this guy to show up at his wife's grave. Grabbed him as he was putting a dozen roses on her headstone.

David Sinclair:
She died while he was in prison, huh?

Agent Cooper:
Just before he went. He's the one that killed her.

Charlie Eppes:
Coincidences are a mathematical reality. Statistically unlikely events can and often do occur. Just look at the genesis of our planet.

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt:
Well, now, I agree that the factors that brought about life on Earth were statistically unlikely, but given the vastness of the cosmos, the limitless possibilities for matter and energy … I'm with Einstein on this. There are no accidents.