Numb3rs – Recap – Episode 2-3

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Numb3rs Episode 2-3, Obsession

Cold opening sees a woman swimming in a pool. She gets a phone call but the person hangs up. And then she gets chased around a house by… someone. Who resembles poker player Phil “Unabomber” Laak. And then she calls 911.

Charlie and Don arrive at the scheme, talking about hockey and the smaller pads. They’re met by LAPD Threat Assessment, and we find out that the woman is pop singer Skyler White, and that she’s been getting letters from a “fan” for the past 6 months. Don tells her that the FBI will have to see the letters. Skyler just wants them to catch the guy.

Back at HQ, Megan runs down the types of stalkers, and notes that celebrities are generally stalked by incompetent stalkers or autoerotic ones.

David and Don are looking at the security cameras, and nothing seems unusual. Don notes that you can’t just disappear.

Opening Credits

Larry’s bought a new car. Although “new” is a relative term, as “vintage” might be more descriptive (It’s a Model T, I believe). Charlie and Amita engage in some good-natured teasing, but Megan seems to dig it. She’s here to ask Charlie and Larry to see if they can find anything on the cameras.

David and Colby are outside Skyler’s house, and they’re trying to note who came around the neighbourhood. They note that the neighbours aren’t too happy with the paparazzi around the house.

At the Eppes house, Larry and Charlie have used cereal boxes to recreate the house, to figure out how the stalker got into the place without showing up on the cameras. Dad helps the scientists out, and Charlie notes that every entry and exit point is covered, so how did the guy get in? Larry notes that the cameras are designed to replicate the human eye.

Cut to HQ, as Charlie tells the agents about this, and that the stalker had to have access to the grounds prior to his B&E in order to manipulate the cameras. Charlie uses this knowledge to enhance the image and produce an outline of the stalker.

Megan has broken down the letters, and notes that they go from being caring to telling her that she’s an idiot and people are using her. This has been happening for the past 3 weeks, and Megan says that he’ll keep coming for Skyler.

At Skyler’s house, Megan and Don try to get her to figure out who the stalker might be. Skyler sees some paparazzi outside and freaks out. She figures that she might have only one option – go home to Gary, Indiana.

As they leave the house, Don notes a hydro van outside the house, and thinks it’s odd that they’d do 2 meter readings in the same neighbourhood in two weeks.

At the university, Charlie and Larry have been slowly reconstructing the face, based on the same technology used to create images of galaxies. And now Charlie finds a love letter addressed to him. She’s a fan of his research – and of his hair. They figure it’s not Amita.

Back at HQ, Megan’s found a journalist named Jerry Wilcox who bought a hydro uniform. They figure he’s the stalker, and Colby is sent out to find him. And he does – he’s dead, and has been for 24 hours. Don notes that the hills where Wilcox was found has a great view of Skyler’s house. Megan notes that taking pictures of Skyler after breaking in doesn’t fit the profile of her stalker.

David and Colby track down a photographer who hired Jerry Wilcox. They borrow his laptop to look at Jerry’s pictures, and they get pictures of somebody else’s house. The photographer notes that tabloids pay big money for a celebrity’s kids or their lovers – and Skyler doesn’t have kids.

Back at Skyler’s house Don and Megan tell her that Wilcox emailed several tabloids claiming some hot pictures. Skyler doesn’t know what they’re talking about. But after some pressure, she admits that she was going to meet with “rapper” Dante Baker. And that her husband is actually in Paris with his current lead actress. Although neither Don and Megan read tabloids, so they don’t know.

David and Colby find Dante Baker (who looks more like Remy Shand than any rapper I can think of) on the golf course. You know you’re bad ass when your manager is played young Tom Hanks in Big. They try to talk to him, but Dante wants to lawyer up.

Megan hasn’t gotten anywhere on the handwriting, but lucky for her Charlie worked on the program that does handwriting analysis.

At the university, Charlie and Amita are still making fun of Larry’s ride. Megan meets up with them, and gets Charlie to try and analyze the handwriting. And then she admires the car more.

At the Eppes house, Charlie and dad are looking at the handwriting, and compare it to gymnastics – the moves are the same, but body shape can make each one slightly different. Colby drops by, and tells Charlie that the handwriting matches a guy incarcerated in Utah. And Charlie then tells him that there’s likely to be a copycat. Who wrote all the escalated threat letters, and meant they had access to the previous letters. Don decides that they need to somehow connect Dante to Wilcox. He sends Megan to talk with Skyler again, and David wants to run the house photos by Charlie.

Megan asks Skyler if anyone knew where she kept the letters – they were in the kitchen. She sees a tabloid, and Skyler tells her that she has a friend there.

At the university, Charlie and Larry are mulling the love note. David drops by, and Charlie shows him a more enhanced photo of the stalker, but it’s still working. David then asks him to help determine a location using shadows in the photos. Luckily, both Charlie and Larry are part of a sundial society. Using the bricks and basketball hoop, they manage to determine that the photos were taken at the house of Dante’s manager. Oh, and the stalker? That was him, too.

At HQ, the manager, Orville, notes that Wilcox was there at Dante’s behest to take pictures of him and Skyler together. He seems deluded about how Skyler felt about him. But he didn’t kill the photographer – he was at a club.

In a boardroom, Dante talks with Don and Megan, and he says that he showed up at Skyler’s house, but she wasn’t there. He admits to being at the Wilcox crime scene, but he was already dead when he got there. And why would he kill Wilcox when he WANTED those photos be taken.

At a photo shoot, Don and Megan meet Skyler, and tell her that they discovered that her tabloid friend tipped her off about the photographer. It turns out that she confronted Wilcox, and killed him (probably unintentionally) using his tripod. But she’s not remorseful, and she’s arrested.

At the university, Alan, Charlie and Larry talk about his car, and Charlie says that he doesn’t want to know who his anonymous fan is. And Alan notes, he doesn’t know what to do with the one he knows about anyways.

Kevin has been an Insider since 2003, writing on a variety of topics ranging from The Amazing Race to Mixed Martial Arts. His current hobbies include Fantasy Football, Sporcle, travelling, making liberal use of his DVR and wondering what the heck he's gonna do when his two daughters are old enough to date. You can follow Kevin on Twitter (@starvenger).