Criminal Minds

Without a Trace and Numb3rs are two more CBS procedurals. Like Criminal Minds, they chug along in their time slots, doing well, but not, for the most part, shows that are greatly talked about. Are they worth watching?

Without a Trace follows the NY Missing Persons Squad of the FBI. They use advanced profiling techniques to reconstruct the missing person’s last day. They investigate every aspect of the victim to try and figure out where they are - if they’ve been abducted, murdered, committed suicide, or run away. The team, led by Anthony LaPaglia, needs every second to find the missing person. As the show continues, more and more details of the characters’ lives come out. CBS seems to make a point of saying that about each of their procedural shows - the characters’ lives are an intregal part of the show. I’m not a regular watcher of this show - possibly because I go to bed ridiculously early most nights.
Thursday night, Without a Trace featured a case in which an 18 year old girl and her father are missing. The father’s job is to clean up crime scenes, and they wonder if this has something to do with their disappearance.
As the episode continued, you could see some of the personality of the victims coming through, which doesn’t always happen. The show was interesting, and the characters were as well. The only part that was kind of odd for me was when a suspect is plied with soda and coffee. During his trip to the bathroom, the head guy, Anthony LaPaglia, meets him and does a little interrogating there. He puts his head in the toilet and flushes a few times. He terrifies the young suspect into a confession. I wondered would an FBI agent put someone’s head in the toilet? Maybe I’d like to believe that wouldn’t really happen. Other than that, I liked Without a Trace. There was even one scene, when an agent had to inform a mother that her child was murdered, that gave me chillls. This never happens, but something about the scene was very striking to me.

Numb3rs is CBS’s third FBI procedural. In this one, Rob Morrow plays Don Eppes, and FBI agent in LA. He recruits his younger brother, Charlie (David Krumholtz) to help solve the more complex crimes. Charlies’s contribution is his brilliant mathematical mind. This show about a mathematician solving crimes for the FBI seemed weird to me, but then I found out it is based on actual events. Anyway, Charlie and his CalSci coworkers work their magic, while the other team members use more traditional methods. The cases in this show are interesting, and the math angle does make it unique. It’s actually entertaining to see Charlie solve complex mathematical equations (yes, it really is!). The characters are also interesting - and even though Charlie is often lost in his own world of numbers, he actually has a girlfriend. The brothers’ relationship to each other, as well as to their father (Judd Hirsch) seems pretty realistic.
In the recent episode, the team is trying to solve the murder of a young woman who is found dead at the home of a movie star. The show has some twists and turns (such as that the victim had plastic surgery performed so she and another woman would look like identical twins. This gave the woman an edge in their call girl careers). I like this show - math is hot.
Texas Instruments even teamed up with CBS to promote math. Their website, We All Use Math Everyday, offers teaching tools and suggestions as to how to use Numb3rs episodes in the classroom, as well as showing students and parents who relevant math is to everyday life. Very cool.

After watching all of CBS’s crime procedurals, it’s still the characters that make a show worth watching. All of the shows might have similar crimes but their approach to them makes them unique - or not. Why do I like Cold Case, Criminal Minds, and Numb3rs, but not CSI:NY or NCIS? It’s the characters and the way they tell their stories.
For more info on your favorite crime shows, check out Crime Drama TV.