Numb3rs 5.08: 36 Hours

[owl]

Oh, this episode left me feeling so sad.

Don's poor broken idealism at the start. DonnieDarko made me cross. LostLamb!Donnie makes me hurt. He takes things so hard. Charlie gets more traumatised, I think, but he bounces back much faster than Don.

And Charlie's "Not running for my nice safe garage, really not" face when he arrived at the crash scene, and the two teenagers dying over the radio... Poor Charlie. He was pretty much knocked sideways by the severity of the crash without having guilt issues about Don, or David eating his head off. How bad must Charlie have felt whenever first the boy who died, and then David, brought parts of the wreckage down on top of themselves even though he was yelling at them to stop?

The sleeping Eppeses scene at the end was just so cute. :)

This episode fits much better where it would have been originally. Don's emotional state, especially with the contrast with the last couple of episodes where he's been happier. Nikki's all-mouth attitude. Charlie's ID badge.

Was it just me, or was there a very s1 feel to the scene in the tent when it was just Don and Charlie? Traumatised Charlie (although s1 Charlie would have been coping much, much worse), Don being reassuring and trying to make him go home and go to sleep, unexpected Charlie!vision and Charlie practically grabbing Don and shaking him in his eagerness to make his point. I wasn't overly freaked out by the whole running Don over thing, as I could rationalise it easily enough by the fact that Don was touching Charlie and saying his name, which would be enough to trigger the nightmare. But the guilt issues over his clearance and Don's job make sense, and it explains Charlie's guilty/concerned look at Don while he was asleep at the end.

Comments

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

I kind of hope they tuck this episode back into its original spot on the DVDs, because it's kind of obvious where it fits (and frankly, this would have made me like the whole arc with the clearance quite a bit more!).

Very strong episode.

And how classy was the "this was filmed before Real Life Accident, be warned it may be disturbing" thing at the beginning? Good show, Show!

The S1 vibe in that scene is not just you--it really did feel like that, partly because Charlie wasn't really in coping mode, I think. And like you I'm not worried about Don being in the Charlie-vision (although it is kind of interesting).