Percolated Recap: Numb3rs: Disturbed (100th Eppesode!)

Somewhere under a pile of continuity, lies your intrepid recapper. She's dug. She's googled. She's rewatched some eppesodes several times. She's begged for assistance. Finally, she just said screw it, and went with plan B -- put down everything she knows and hopes it's a respectable performance. In fact, she's probably found references where there weren't intended to be references, just because, she though, with it being the 100th eppesode and all, there are probably 100 references even if she has to make them up.

She respectfully asks that you don't count the references. Just because she thinks there are 100 references doesn't mean she found 100 references.

Sure, we were all warned about the Easter eggs that we would have to hunt like children desperate for a sugar rush. Amongst those Easter eggs would not only be from the pilot and subsequent eppesodes, but also from the infamous unaired pilot. Hold on, what is that I smell? Is this a cruel trick? How are we supposed to know the Easter eggs that come from the original, unaired pilot? Wouldn't that mean we would've had to have seen said pilot? The pilot no one was ever supposed to see? Is CBS trying to find those fans who do have elicit copies on their computers? Do they want to find the copies that are now so degraded it makes the lighting in the past couple of seasons look good? Of course, I wouldn't know that. I just heard it from a friend of a friend of one of my ninjas. It's a shame I no longer remember who that was.

Therefore, I would like to officially state that if it was mentioned in the commentary for the pilot, or in one of the special features of the DVD for Season 1, I won't be mentioning it. You see, I'm a good and honourable person. STOP LAUGHING!

In 100 eppesodes, our little midseason replacement that could has come a long way. To show the advancements, let me use something we all know, as a symbol: the opening grid. Just look at the graphic differences between the pilot and now and, despite all the improvements to the art design but not the lighting, the horrific spelling mistake on the 100th eppesode opening grid.
Well, at least the spelling issue has remained consistent.

I looked for correlations between the two. I pulled out my trusty calculator to see if at least one of the numbers in each of the grids were related. Nope. I was highly disappointed. In fact, there's only two other things that disappointed me more, and they are as follows:

• Robin wasn't in this eppesode.
• I, DESPITE THE CONSTANT WHINING PLEADING, CAJOLING AND REMINDING, DID NOT RECEIVE AN EASTER EGG, WORLD PEACE, OR A PONY!

Why yes, one did upset me more than the other. How could you tell? I was trying to be subtle.

We actually begin this eppesode strangely stuck in suburbia. There's song which sounds a bit like an old Fifties tune, which is actually rather creepy. Don't believe me? Listen to it here.

In suburbia, with the green lawns, and fuzzy gels, we get an average family -- Mom, Dad and kid who plays soccer, going about their day. They live at either 4236, some street, or 634 some street. When Dad and the kid drive off, a delivery person knocks on the door, and, as we can safely assume by the rope he's carrying with him, kills her.

As he drives off, with the creepy song still playing, the mailman nods to him. It's such an obvious thing that I'm now just waiting for the mailman to become another victim.
Later, after the body has been found, the police are investigating, not the Fedcakes. Despite this, Charlie is sent the police report at the IHOF.
Charlie claims he's working on a "thought exercise" but anyone who has watched Charlie over the past five seasons knows that when he's really, really upset, he chooses impossible math problems like P vs. NP or stopping all the gang violence.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are clearly trying to talk Charlie down off the math ledge, because all of the crimes have different MOs, victim types, and well, some of it would just seem like random accidents. In other words, this time they aren't questioning the math, since Charlie claims there's a pattern, but they are, nicely questioning his mental stability.
Charlie doesn't exactly help himself when he justifies his findings using alien math. It doesn't matter how sound the theory is, once the search for intelligent life is involved, and you justify the sequence by the moon, there's no way not to convince people that this isn't the soundtrack to your life.

It's quite clear the Fedcakes have been plotting to try and snap Charlie out of crazyville. Outside the office where Charlie is working away on his lunar alien math, Artemas and Athena wait for a update from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. David gives us a recap of Charlie's behaviour during "Uncertainty Principle," comparing the last time Don was injured, with this time. Honestly, David's conclusions make way more sense.
Liz channels Megan, by profiling Charlie as suffering from PTSD and it manifesting as hyper vigilance. While we're all supposed to think Charlie is about to visit the men in white coats, we all know, this is Charlie and while we may doubt some things, we do not doubt his math.

La Maison d'Eppes: After the doubt he faced at the International House of Fedcakes, Charlie's gone home to get some support.
What he finds is Don, who is sleeping on the couch. You see, this is where I thought Robin would be rather handy. For someone recovering from being stabbed in the chest, you'd think a bed, preferably a bed occupied by someone willing to take care of you, would be the better option.

Don tries to talk some sense into Charlie and recommends the little brother move on from the stabbing. Charlie scoffs at the idea of Don being the one to advise moving on, considering Don's less than stellar record in that department. By less than stellar, I mean totally craptastic thus nothing is resolved between the brothers Eppes.
Alleyway: The next morning, we learn that although rain, nor sleet, nor hail, or whatever other precipitation is mentioned in that bloody saying, may not stop the mailman from completing his round, but a shot to the head will.

Title Flash.

Artemas has arrived at the scene of the body dump, because she not only knows the lead detective, but also Charlie's already there, and because Don is incapacitated, the rest of the Fedcakes are picking up the taking care of the little brother slack. It's actually kind of sweet, in a co-dependent way.

IHOF: "Well, the pattern isn't perfect. I mean, there are micro clusters that are, currently, anomalous." Wait, sorry, Charlie's talking about the murders, not the spacing of the Easter Eggs. The micro clusters don't negate the macro pattern. Since Charlie said the word macro, I felt obligated to do this.

In yet another reference to the pilot, David reminds Charlie that since they both started with the Fedcakes at the same time, David's learned to trust the math fu. The problem is, the higher ups may see Charlie's theory as more crazy than calculated. David simply can't justify giving Charlie the manpower. He can, on the other hand, provide him with more data (a frequent demand by Charlie throughout the series) to help Charlie act more like the Seti telescopes. Again, Charlie, no matter how smart you think the killer is, comparing yourself to the search for alien life is still not a great way to sound, you know, sane! Really, he sounds only moments away from well, making my artistic representation below, become reality.

The information David gives Charlie, says it all about his feelings about the math genius's ideas. David, the Sub-Chief Fedcake while the Chief Fedcake is shirtless recuperating, sends Charlie to the amateurs.

Roy McGill's Paranoid House of Paranoia: Roy McGill (I'm assuming a take off on Don McGill, one of TPTB that keep denying me my shout out) is thrilled to be meeting again with the one and only Charles Edward Emrick, I mean Eppes. Phew, thank heavens that changed from the original pilot! Imagine if I had to call eppesodes emricksodes. It would give a whole new meaning to emrick-rolled.

I digress, so back to the regularly scheduled recap. Roy calls his collection the "Truth Cave" and I call him a one man Lone Gunmen.
Looking around, it's pretty obvious that Charlie's realized exactly how far down the rabbit hole he must've gone in order for David to think that Roy, with his actual recording of a UFO's sounds, and random snack food that cannot go bad due to the fact it's all made from chemicals, was actually going to be of some use to him.

McGill is as excited about working with Charlie as Charlie would be if he could run out of the Truth Cave, right now. At the moment, McGill's biggest check mark on his resume is that he has the sixth most popular blog on serial killers. Hold on, he has the 6th most popular blog on serial killers and he gets Charlie Eppes on his doorstep. I've got to be in the top 15 of people who blog about Numb3rs, and I can't even get a bloody shout out in an eppesode filled with fan Easter eggs? How is that fair?

BTW, not getting my shout out has not broken me. It's just firmed up my resolve more. Before, I was the rock, blocking your way, and now, I'll be the hard place too!

Anyway, McGill has found two more murders that fit into Charlie's "Spatial-Tempura" thing. The look on Charlie's face as McGill mangles the mathematical terminology is bloody priceless. Now, bloody priceless is a phrase which here means, about to kill McGill.

Since some news clippings aren't exactly going to turn Charlie's data crank, McGill suggests a field trip to Serial Killer Data Central.

Serial Killer Data Central: This is one man by the name of Gene Evans. I was hoping that this guy might be some obscure reference, but if he is, I've failed to find any clue.

Gene's an amateur detective of the Jessica Fletcher variety. He helped sole four missing persons cases and one murder. Unlike Jessica Fletcher, who was never, ever intimidated when threatened, Gene is a pansy, and stopped all his investigations after he got a couple of crank phone calls. Okay, maybe not, but really, this scene is only to move the plot along and give Charlie a whole bunch of cases near Fresno and Bakersfield (which still aren't references unless I'm failing, epically), a connection between several of the cases and a constrictor know, and a name, Detective Brent Driscoll.
When it comes to the detective's name, I was damn sure that was an Easter Egg, but, yet again, I can't prove it.

Cal Sci: In Charlie's new Hobbit hole office, all of his new development on the cognitive emergence theory is still out, ready to be worked on at a moment's notice. Oh wait, that has nothing to do with Charlie finding a balance between his academic and Fedcake life.
Despite having two thirds of the math triad wondering if he's insane, Charlie insists that he's right, even though he can't explain the micro clusters. Thus, Larry (who thinks Charlie is acting like a previous version of himself -- you know the one that lived in the steam tunnels and didn't have a cell phone) lays an Easter egg suggests that Charlie remember that people are never as elegant as equations and therefore, his "approach must be less elegant, more complicated."
"Haven't we had this conversation before?" Charlie asks. Why yes, yes they have. Oh, I'm feeling nostalgic.

IHOF: Well hello there everyone's favourite techie, Matt Li. Just by seeing him, we have multiple references in one very useful person.

He's not there to judge Charlie. In fact, when has he ever been anything other than helpful? Well, the answer is never, as he references Kim Rossmo, who helped catch Robert Pickton. While I would usually be all patriotic over a Canadian reference in Numb3rs, this isn't exactly something any Canadian wants to be remembered about our country.

Oh, and how is this an Easter egg? You know what Rossmo's claim to fame is? He invented the whole hot zone concept Charlie used in the pilot. It's way more reliable math than buying a lottery ticket, you know.

La Maison d'Eppes: In what has to be the weirdest moment of this series, ever, I learn Charlie is psychic. Why do I say that? Charlie has a dream about Amita being attacked while all dressed up, looking like she's about to go out to dinner. The dream takes place right outside the house, leaving Charlie shaken.
Charlie awakens to a classic sibling line. "You're in my spot here." I'm a little surprised Don doesn't follow it up with something equally as big brother-esque.
I have to say, it's good of Charlie not to point out that he owns the house, considering how Don is feeling. He's been shot, beaten up, and played a whole tonne of sports, but the knife wound is the only thing that's laid him up for a long period of time. Because of this, Don no longer feels like the "job owns him."

Charlie's taken aback because all he can do now is work and heads back to the office. I'm taken aback because if Don Eppes doesn't live for work and Robin who the hell is he?
Cal Sci: Charlie's back in his Hobbit hole. By the way, I didn't plan on having that name stick, and now that's all I can think about his new, dark office. Thus, in an attempt to bring some light back into the dark space, we get a very interesting Easter egg. You know, in the commentary for the pilot, everyone agrees that this should've had a second guest starring appearance.
It's the oddest parallel, even if one doesn't include the prism, from the pilot eppesode, of the scene when Charlie worked out the first hot zone, five seasons ago. This scene is a collection of many references in one, complete with music.
Oh wait, I should've added something to that list: adorkable professor.

The Hobbit hole is even darker now, because Charlie has hung string and paper everywhere, making me think he's made some weird crazy version of a math mobile, or a quipu.
Suddenly, Charlie realizes Amita isn't dead, and greets her accordingly. Everywhere, Charmita fans sigh. Le sigh.

Serial Killer Data Central: 7am in the morning is an ungodly hour, McGill and I are in total agreement on that. Unfortunately, Charlie and McGill haven't learned the whole open doors are always ominous rule that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern now have down cold. Despite all the obvious signs that something is amiss, Charlie and McGill still keep wandering around the house, until they finally decide to check the garage, only to find yet another Easter egg, but this one, though wrapped in plastic, does not have a chocolate inside.
IHOF: Charlie's confused because the Evans only fit the micro pattern. I'm sure they care, Charlie.

There is a witness and the Fedcakes will definitely be participating in the investigation, but David is cautious. He doesn't want to jump in, arms flailing yelling "serial killer! Serial killer!" just yet. In defense of my BFFedcake, it is only his second week in command. He doesn't want to screw things up. Also, considering this show's penchant for injuring David, there's probably a bit of self preservation in it too.
Due the obligatory relative interview! Just like many of the obligatory relative interviews, he sends Artemas and Athena off to interview a red herring, Mark Horn. In his life as an accountant, Gene made a mistake on Horn's taxes, which resulted in some pretty nasty consequences. Okay, accounting errors are one thing, but I would like to point out the obvious. This is a man who would help catch bad people for a living. Usually, bad people will do bad things in order not to get caught.

Witness: There was one witness who may have seen someone around the Evans' property. It's a Robert Posdner and he tentatively identifies the red herring, only to then freak out that he might be a target. I have to say, I totally missed what that meant the first time around.
The man identified the red herring! How could I not have figured it out here? *hangs head in shame*

Cal Sci: McGill walks in on Larry trying to help Charlie unpack. When McGill challenges Larry's right to be there, Larry says he's the "holder of the Walter T. Merrick Chair in theoretical physics."

McGill wants proof, and frankly, so do I.
Clearly, McGill does not need as much of an explanation as I do, since all it takes to distract him is Larry saying he's looking for a Green Lantern book in the midst of Charlie's stuff. Geeks unite. It's an appropriate superhero to reference, since the Green LAntern's all about catching criminals, no matter what. It's not like Wolverine, who just looks really, really, really hot when he's running about in leather.

*Hugh Jackman daydreams.*

Sorry, a bit distracted. By the way, that apology is about getting distracted, not the topic that distracted me.

McGill and Larry also bond because they're both conspiracy nuts. Although, Larry dropped the nut part a while ago.
Just in case anyone interested, McGill also keeps a bigfoot website. Since I'm not particularly fascinated with this conspiracy nut (he does not get to drop the nut), I'm relieved when Charlie arrives and the discussion moves back onto the case.

McGill's found another victim, but this time, he thinks it's "Victim Zero." I got all excited for a second there, thinking that was an Easter egg, and was disappointed when I find out that the reference I thought it was referring too was actually patient zero. Damn.

Victim Zero is Nancy Kershaw, a high school student from the Easter Egg town of Stockton, where, if we all remember, Don once played for the Rangers. Not that any of us would forget the mental image of Don, in a baseball uniform, running around. You're welcome for a reminder of that image, by the way.
Just before McGill explains his reasoning, he says something the Fandom's been saying for 99 eppesodes, "I love your hair, by the way."
McGill's reasoning, if not his sanity, is sound. Nancy Kershaw, Victim Zero, was bound with the same knot Gene identified earlier. Since most serial killers start close to home, the first victim is important. Plus, someone also called up Victim Zero's boyfriend and threatened him. What's that I smell in the air? Could it be, a witness?

IHOF: Artemas and Athena are still working other avenues of the investigation, specifically, the red herring. He still looks good, but that's only because there's still a good half an hour left in this eppesode.

Park: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are send to arrest Red Herring because he's being creepy hanging around a park.

IHOF: Back to Artemas and Athena, and I'm starting to think that TPTB insisted everyone be given fair time in this eppesode, otherwise, why would the women look up the information and interview the suspect, yet the men be the ones to arrest him?
Yes, Mark Horn is not the type of person I'd invite over for dinner, but he has a valid reason not to want Gene dead. Without Gene, who is going to tell the IRS about the mistake on the taxes? It's good to know that people who are under the misconception that everything is a fight can at least be logical about who they need on their team.

La Maison d'Eppes: Amita's taken the bull by the horns to try and snap Charlie out of his obsession. She's gone over all his data, looking for flaws, and can only find Charlie's conclusions to be valid.
IHOF: The Fedcakes may be focussing in on Horn, but what they need is a little push in the right direction. Little push, a phrase which here means the return of the Chief Fedcake reminding everyone that this show is about how brilliant Charlie's math is.
Once the Fedcakes are all on board, the micro clusters suddenly make perfect sense. The killer went after the postman because the postman saw the killer. When Gene Evans announced he was starting up his investigations again, the killer got rid of someone who had already made several connections to the case. Thus, the micro clusters show all the times the killer accidentally exposed himself. *Not like that.*
Don, as he's always done with Charlie's math, well, except for rare occasions, including the original pilot when Don was really sort of a douche bag, takes responsibility and trusts in Charlie's math and the team gets to work.

Since the killer is one scary bastard, he likes to spook his victims, by letting them catch glimspes of him, knowing full well the police don't take prowler report seriously (as purported by Nikki, and, she would know). Now they've got to start scouring through reports in specific geographic areas that allow for the killer to slip in and out, unnoticed. Now all the Fedcakes have to do is find a couple, in their mid-thirties, who has reported a prowler and fits the geographic profile.

I know LA is often portrayed on TV as the crime capital of the freaking planet, but really, I can't imagine the number of people who fit that very specific profile could be that many.

Cal Sci: It's the outside cafe we've seen before where Larry and McGill gang up on Charlie because Charlie won't include victim 0 in his pattern. It's quite annoying when the pair of them don't use the most obvious reason: a pattern needs to start somewhere and the start isn't always as neat and clear as it will be later on. At least, that's how it is for knitting patterns. It's not like, even after 100 eppesodes, I know anything at all about math.

Larry uses the light from the stars as an example, and honestly, I don't know where exactly he was going with that. It doesn't help that McGill distracts me twice. Once, he does so by talking about alien sightings and the second time, I'm too distracted by what he's reading.

Okay, now that the props guys have failed me like TPTB have with my shout out, I'll get back to Larry's point. If victim 0 really is victim 0, it'll reveal things about the killer that the killer has subsequently tried to keep hidden.

Also, as McGill points out, it means that victim 0's boyfriend heard the voice of the killer.

Thus, Charlie heads back to the Fedcakes to have them look into nancy Kershaw's death. McGill is so grateful that Larry got Charlie to finally agree to it, McGill says in gratitude, "Thank you, astrology dude." Larry does correct him far more nicely than I would have.
IHOF: Detective Driscoll, the Easter egg that wasn't, is dead! He drowned in a pool (drowned, a term which here means, the killer got him dun dun dun). Athena's going to go collect the files tomorrow.

La Maison d'Eppes: Hello solarium! We've missed you. Also, hello House War, I've missed you since seasons 2 and 3.

The brief skirmish in a war settled a couple of years ago is over hedges and landscaping. Charlie, rightfully, points out that he owns the house and has done so since "Prime Suspect," which has nothing to do with Helen Mirren.

Don's siding with Alan to make sure the House War tensions end before they really begin.

Someone needs to explain to Alan the concept of an Easter egg, since he points out that the case from the pilot was solved in the solarium. Hello, Alan, it's not an Easter egg if it's explicitly explained to the audience.

Alan reminisces about how, before the start of the pilot, he was afraid, if character who don't exist yet, or are sort of asshole-y in their Boston versions, can be afraid, that the brothers Eppes about have nothing in common, other than one living parent. Oh please, Alan, they have plenty of things in common! Let me explain them to you.
See? You add that to Charlie's lifelong need to impress Don, and trust me, they were always going to find a way to be in each other's lives.

Now, since Alan pointed out that the case was solved in the solarium, and it wasn't, does that ruin the reference? Is it like Schrodinger's cat, after the box is opened?
BTW Alan, I'm so better at hiding Easter Eggs that you are!

IHOF: The talk last night reminded Charlie of all the Hot Zone math from the first eppesode. Hopefully, without the bumper sticker or moving this time. While David may know what Charlie is talking about, Nikki's completely confounded. Ready to revisit the sprinkler Charlie-vision from the first eppesode, David interrupts, insisting that my BFFedcake has picked up a thing or two about math.

In an amzing feat, never before, or probably ever repeated, on television, David manages, with a better graphics team, and only slightly different wording, to give us the sprinkler analogy.
Why is this such an amazing feat? Why would I be so impressed by someone who impresses me weekly? Well, David wasn't present for the original sprinkler analogy. Nope, that was given to Don in La Maison d'Eppes at a point in David's career where his boss was completely suspicious of him. HOW THE HELL DID DAVID KNOW THAT?

Oh yes, and I have a question about the equations involved. See if you can answer it.
Thanks to the equation, Charlie's identified 30 potential targets, while Nikki, like myself, is still confused as to how David knows and understands what's going on.

She's also confused about how 23% is the highest chance for anyone one of the victims to be attacked. According to Charlie, without the use of graphics, 23% in statistic land means "get your ass in gear."

Stakeout: I'm going to cover them as two separate incidents, even though the director made them look like they were one and the same.

The first incident has a few cool Easter eggs in it. For some reason, Athena and Guildenstern are watching the first house, where they pass the time talking about cop movies. One they mention
is Sea of Love, which Liz is a fan of because she's a big Michael Rooker fan. Now, am I supposed to know Michael Rooker's name in the original pilot was just Mike, aka Don's partner. I'll assume someone mentioned that, somewhere.

Anyway, Colby says Michael Rooker always plays the killer, but Liz, being the fan that she is, knows that in The Replacement Killers, which was written by one of the people consistently denying my shout out, world peace and pony, Mr. Ken Sanzel. All I can say is thank heavens not every scene is chock full of referenes like this one. I'd be typing this recap up until the start of next season and it would be 161803 pages long.

Now, I would've included a screencap of Liz and Colby having this conversation, but, while I could see them, slightly, on my HDTV, I can barely make them out in anything smaller than 32 inches. Geez people, trying hiring a lighting guy. I hear Colin J. Campbell is available.

The conversation is interruped when they see a prowler roaming the grounds but they spring into action, saving Michelle Feynman, and yes, that is his kid. A character and reference in one? Well done, Numb3rs!
Oh, wait, it turns out Michelle Feynman was never really in danger as it was Leonard, her daughter's friend, who apparently shows his friendship by TPing trees. This is good as considering what the fandom owes Feynman (since David Krumholtz listened to his lectures in preparation), having his daughter kept safe, even in fiction, is the least that could be done.

At the other house, two people are falling asleep on the couch, seconds before someone imitating a horror movie goes to stab them with a knife.
Before the killer can do anything, David takes a shot at him through the window. I'm a little disappointed that my BFFedcake is suddenly inflicted with TV aim -- which is missing despite having a clear, close shot, but it does result in a night chase over a bunch of fences. I'm pretty sure we've seen that before. Why do they always run?

Nikki and David lose the killer in the underbrush and when David asks Nikki if she can spot the suspect, I'm irritated as I can barely see them. Hello? Lights?

La Maison d'Eppes: David calls Don to fill him in on who the killer pulled a Keyser Soze but that makes Charlie worry about something else. What if the killer decides he's too exposed in LA, and packs up his crazy kit and moves elsewhere.

Cal Sci: The Math Triad show the hot zone to David in the Hobbit Hole. Now all they've got to do is narrow down the list of suspects within the hot zone. Again, they did this already, five years ago.

IHOF: The detective who wasn't an Easter egg which could've been so easily done. Detective Pickering anyone? still has some useful files. In those files is one Wayne Potvin, who looks suspiciously like Robert Posdner.

"Even I have to ask," Charlie says, "what are the odds?" Um, if Charlie asks, they're so infintesimal that calculations might even fail the adorkable professor.
Robert Posdner has two wother names: Thomas Park, David Palmer. This is an extremely frustrating moment for me, because if these names are Easter eggs, I sure as hell couldn't find them. A fictional president of the United States, that I found, but a relation to Numb3rs, not so much. How hard would a name like Roland Holdane been so difficult?
Right now, all they've got is a man who has several fake identites. That's not enough to make a case, and I don't need Robin, as much as I would love to have her in this eppesode, to tell me so.

Surveillance: Considering how long Robmas Potmer has managed to stay undetected, it's not surprising that he picks up on the Fed (not Fedcake) surveillance. Some unnamed Feds don't know the meaning of the word subtle, since they're spotted on the first pass by, when Liz manages to stay safely concealed. She might want to give them some advice.
Cal Sci: Charlie and Larry have another conversation we've heard before. Charlie can't get his mind off the Fedcakes, whereas Larry wants him to focus on his other work, like cognitive emergence. I think everyone spotted that Easter egg, so that one was the gimme for all.

McGill, who, honestly, I wasn't missing, comes running all the way from the parking lot, and looks like he's about to keel over from a heart attack. From what we saw, food wise, if one can call it food, it's suprising he isn't dead.

One of the suspects in Nancy Kershaw's murder was a Thomas Park, and ding, ding, ding, not only is McGill right about victim 0 but also, he has goosebumps.
IHOF: Now that they have Robmas Potmer's original name, they can learn all sorts of things about the killer. It'll also bring the team closer together, having cracked a nearly impossible case.
Nikki brings the news that Nancy's boyfriend, Steve, was targeted becasue he chased the killer right after the murder. Once his break lines were cut and he received the threatening phone call, he moved out of state. That's the same thing McGill might want to think about doing, considering he called Steve and had him fly in by letting the poor man assume McGill was a Fedcake.
In a strange, and superfluous twist, Amita spends a lot of time taking Robmas Potmer's voice and trying to turn it back into a teenager's, only to have the poor, long-suffering Steve, not even need it. It's been so ingrained into his memory, and his existence, he could never forget it. Sure, the filtering is a cool concept, but couldn't it have been used in another eppesode when its coolness could be fully appreciated?

Robmas Potmer's: Okay, this guy is the mayor of Creepyville in Creeptonia, because he's totally calm when surrounded by Fedcakes in Kevlar.
Okay, we all know I'd be really, really happy to see them, regardless.

He tells his wife that it's time to pick up the kids. This guy spawned? I was so hoping those kids we saw earlier were step-children.

IHOF/ Potmer's: We get a couple of scenes intermixed here.
The first, is clearly just after the arrest, where the Fedcakes head down to Robmas Potmer's workshop and find small trophies, pictures of crime scene, weapons, and victim 0's bracelet. About the only thing they didn't find were black truffles.

The other scene is the interrogation at the IHOF. Robmas Potmer is serene as he explains how one has to careful, and plan, and hwo proud he is no one suspected him. Um, can one be crazy and zen at the same time?

Later, as the Fedcakes pack up the case, unable to comprehend the killer and Charlie says the healthiest thing he's said all eppesode, "You really weren't expecting a rational explanation, were you?"
Since there isn't a rational explanation for Robmas Potvin, all they can do and be happy that Charlie reacts in obsessively mathematic ways whenever Don gets hurt. If Don is ever killed in the line of duty, I'm thinking the work Charlie would produce would force the invention of a math Nobel.

Let me clarify that. In no way am I wanting something to happen to Don. I'm just tossing out some conjecture over something that will never, ever happen. Please don't innundate my mailbox with hate mail. Conjecture does not equal a wish. Why would I want anything to happen to my OTP?

As Charlie puts it, "Some people drink. Some people gamble. I analyze data." Well, at least he's not going back to unsolvable math problems as coping strategies.

La Maison d'Eppes: We finish the way the pilot should have finished, with a family moment. It's an extended family moment, as both Amita and Larry are there. And yes, I did think that all we needed is Robin to round out the picture.

All the talk is about moving forward. Charlie will unpack his office (and find Larry's Green Lantern book) and Don, due to the miracle of television healing, has recovered enough to go back to work.

The eppesode ends with something that makes a great analogy to remember, but is also a good idea to remember in real life -- the sprinklers. Everyone makes a mad dash inside and one fandom dream is fulfilled.
Now we just have to work on another dream: how about another 100 eppesodes a shout out, world peace, and a pony.

Recapper's Note: The way I see it, we need a battle of the ultimate cool between the Fonz and Edgerton. Who am I fooling? Sorry, but the Fonz will be crushed just by the chariot of enigmatic coolness. On the other hand, what I am trying to get at is that the final two eppesodes of the season will be posted back-to-back, next week. Because of that, there will not be an instacap for the finale so stay tuned for the final percolated recaps for season 5!

Recapper's Challenge: So, how did I do at finding the Easter eggs (with a little help from my awesome friends)? Also, how did you do at finding my Easter eggs? Have fun!