Numb3rs starts out with a good premise - using math to solve crimes - and it uses that device effectively in differentiating itself from the other crime-dramas en vogue. The first 2-1/2 seasons are pretty good with each episode and it's story being self-contained, plot and clue development pretty good, standard action and chases, and a reasonable epilogue.Then half way thru Season 3, the writers/producers began tinkering with the the show and what had worked. They began introducing arching story lines, not the least annoying of which was the math genius's new love interest. That and the actress couldn't act. And at this point, the show jumps the shark. And as the series progressed, they began giving her more screen time - really irritating. Then they dumped Farr's character, Morrow and Sumika's bubdding interest and brought back one character they were right to get rid of, and finally half wrote out Peter MacNichols' character. Basically, they messed up a good thing. Oh, and they started getting all Liberal agenda on viewers at that point too.Overall it's a good show, and if they had just stuck to what worked when they started, it'd have remained fun. Rob Morrow, Judd Hirsh, David Krumholz, Alimi Ballard, Diane Farr, Dylan Bruno, and Aya Sumika really gelled as a team. It's not a bad series for entertainment, until season 3.

I wanted very much to love this show. I'm mathematically inclined, and I was glad to see a show that tried to show young viewers how math could solve so many real-world problems.Unfortunately, my enjoyment of the show was spoiled by several of its elements: The "background" music is too persistent and way too loud, often drowning out the dialogue.Diane Farr mumbles and slurs her lines, to the point that some of her lines are just incomprehensible. Combined with the overly loud music drowning out all the dialogue, this is a show I must watch with closed-captioning, so I can read what she's supposed to be saying.The character relationships are just not interesting enough. How many times can we watch Charlie Eppes kvetching about his dad or arguing with his dad. Don Eppes, the FBI agent, is a more interesting character, suggesting that the writers have a better idea how to portray an FBI agent as a dimensional character than they do a mathematician.And worst of all, some (but by no means all) of the "math breakthroughs" that Charlie Eppes is supposed to be making, are just exercises in logic that any good sleuth familiar with modern computer graphics and map displays could invent.

too much 'music' background --drowns out the sense of the scenes, and covers up the dialog. I can't believe there is anything that says requires much input instead of trying to get short statements - reduced numbers of words and ideas. It makes no sense to me but in order to request ending the music background it seems I have to write a whole lot more than I intended. The music is overpowering the feel of the scenes and helping to let us know we're not math scholars so you don't expect us to understand the ideas being voiced, and that is helped by the excess of that really annoying music. I can't think of much more to say to explain what I see as a serious detraction from a quite enjoyable TV production.

I read up a little about some of the real life mathematicians who contribute to the writing of the show and this part doesn't surprise me. The basic science always sounds realistic and accurate in its own right even to a dummy such as myself. The problem lies in the other 40 mins or so where this mountain of algorithms, probabilities, demographics, and astro-physics are all supposed to out work the entire FBI agency in a few hours and locate a single criminal because a guy had some little mathmatical epiphany. I mean come on man, im already trying to suspend my disbelief with the less than par acting and the painfully average police cop show story lines. Basically the only thing that seems to have kept this show alive is the science aspect, but it just comes off as more science fiction than science in its implementation. Im sorry, it just fails every time i watch it and my stomach turns a little to believe that people tune in for this week in and week out for 6 years. " Oh, you guys have a killer have a you cant catch? I have this cool algorithm i can plug into my butt and abracadabra he is at this place at this time." Except, no, not really, you're full of crap.