Numb3rs (2005–2010)

Peter MacNicol: Dr. Larry Fleinhardt

Photos 

Quotes 

• Don Eppes : [picks up paper airplane off floor]  Who made this?

  Charlie Eppes : Me. Why?

  Don Eppes : Well, wings are a little thin here, buddy.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Hey, wait, wait, let me see this.

  Charlie Eppes : Forgive me if all my years of advanced applied mathematics take issue with that assessment.

  Don Eppes : Yeah, well, you'll forgive me if all my years of high school detention say I'm right.

• Charlie Eppes : [Larry has been waxing philosophical]  Is that the kind of stuff you talk about with Megan at lunch?

  Don Eppes : [Don and Dad are surprised; Larry looks at Charlie, who grins mischievously]  Wait, ho-ho-hold on. You and Megan went out to lunch?

  Alan Eppes : Oh, please tell me you ordered something other than white food.

  [the Eppes men laugh] 

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : [trying to maintain some dignity]  This was a meal shared by two inquisitive minds in an intellectual pursuit.

  Charlie Eppes : [grinning bigger]  Of course it was, like all your lunches with David. Oh, and with Colby.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : [matter-of-factly]  A gamma ray burst will release more energy in ten seconds than the sun will emit in its entire ten-billion-year lifespan.

  Don Eppes : I got it, what's the Hulk's real name?

  Charlie Eppes : Um, Bruce Banner.

  Don Eppes : That's right. I mean, didn't gamma rays turn him into the Hulk?

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : [still matter-of-factly]  They come from the furthest ends of the universe, and after 45 years, we're still uncertain of their origin.

  [turns to leave] 

  Alan Eppes : And?

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : [pointedly matter-of-fact]  And we're closer to an answer on *that* than the three of you are ever going to get on *this*.

  [smirks slightly, and closes the door behind him] 

• Don Eppes : Look, please don't do this.

  Charlie Eppes : Don't do what, Don? Go ahead. Go ahead and try to tell me what it is that I'm doing. You don't even know what it is I'm doing.

  Don Eppes : Actually, I do. The thing is, I don't think you do.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Okay, I'm going to go contemplate the koi pond.

  Don Eppes : Charlie, look, you helped us find these guys once before. You can do it again. Come on.

  Charlie Eppes : Why, so you can get shot again?

  Don Eppes : No, buddy, look. Understand, I appreciate you care about me, but it's not going to happen.

  Charlie Eppes : Statistically, you're dead now. You understand what that means? A man aimed a gun at your head and fired. The fact that you survived is an anomaly, and it's unlikely to be the outcome of a second such encounter.

• Charlie Eppes : You know, this isn't the first time I've received a love letter. When I published my first article in the American Journal of Mathematics I was invited to spend the weekend at a bed and breakfast in Santa Barbara.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Yeah? Did you go?

  Charlie Eppes : Ah, I was fourteen. My mother had to break the news to a very embarrassed female professor at Berkley.

• Charlie Eppes : Larry, something went wrong, and I don't know what, and now it's like I can't even think.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Well, let me guess: you tried to solve a problem involving human behavior, and it blew up in your face.

  Charlie Eppes : Yeah, pretty much.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Okay, well, Charles, you are a mathematician, you're always looking for the elegant solution. Human behavior is rarely, if ever, elegant. The universe is full of these odd bumps and twists. You know, perhaps you need to make your equation less elegant, more complicated; less precise, more descriptive. It's not going to be as pretty, but it might work a little bit better. Charlie, when you're working on human problems, there's going to be pain and disappointment. You gotta ask yourself, is it worth it?

• Charlie Eppes : Hey, hey, don't get all Fleinhart on me. It's just the Physics Department paper airplane contest.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Fl-Fleinhart? Since when did my last name become a predicate adjective?

  Charlie Eppes : Since your students started using it that way.

• Charlie Eppes : When we're working together, we talk and we laugh, and there's? an energy. And I don't understand why that doesn't work outside the office. Why don't we have anything else to talk about?

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : You know, you're making an underlying assumption here that I question.

  Charlie Eppes : What's that?

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : That there's something else you have to talk about. See, when you see two people unable to talk about politics or movies...

  Charlie Eppes : Hey, movies, I - I can - I can talk about - I just saw the penguin movie.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : I see two extraordinary minds that can communicate on the purest level a man and woman can interface on.

  [pauses to think] 

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Okay, second purest.

  Charlie Eppes : Geek love.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Hey, no better kind.

• Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : In twenty years of teaching, I have never received evaluation comments like these. Boring - me! Intellectually, uh, inaccessible.

  Charlie Eppes : I thought we came up on this hike to get your mind off this ridiculous thing.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : I mean, one-one student even said I'm out of touch in cutting-edge thinking in multidimensional theory. That one alone kept me up at night.

  Charlie Eppes : Everybody gets bad evaluations now and then, come on.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : Yeah, yeah, says the professor who never received less than a rave.

  Charlie Eppes : As with any large group, there are responses that cover the entire spectrum. I once had a girl in my combinatorics seminar tell me that I was disorganized and I taught too fast.

  Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : That's an accurate observation, actually.

• Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : You know that it's considered unsolvable?

  Charlie Eppes : Well, certainly people who have failed to solve it might think that.

• Dr. Larry Fleinhardt : You know, here's a discussion: Why is it that we remember the past and not the future?

  Charlie Eppes : That's a tough one, Larry.